PKEEDOn      I 


Mabel  F.    Edwards 
1880-1952 


L^-  M-hVXfA 


PERFECT    FREEDOM. 


U-. 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS' 


ADDRESSES 


WITH   INTRODUCTION  BY 

Rev.  JULIUS  H.  WARD 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


BOSTON 
CHARLES   E.  BROWN  &  CO. 


Copyright,  1893, 
By  Charles  E.  Brown  &  Co. 


Ke?M^fAj6>  2592 1 1 

GIFT 


Typography  by  J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.,  Boston,  U.S.A. 
Presswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhiil  &  Co.,  Boston,  U.S.A. 


873 


INTRODUCTION. 


o^Ko 


Phillips  Brooks  never  spoke  on  public  occa- 
sions without  saying  something  notable.  His 
Lenten  addresses  at  Trinity  Church  were  so  good 
that  people  hung  upon  his  lips  for  the  simplest 
word  that  he  uttered.  When  he  went  to  New 
York  to  give  addresses  in  the  venerable  old 
Trinity  Church  at  the  head  of  Wall  Street,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  whole  financial  world  was  eager 
to  crowd  into  that  ancient  edifice  and  hear  of  its 
duties  and  have  pointed  out  its  way  to  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  by  this  greatest  of  modern  evan- 
gelists. Phillips  Brooks  had  the  rare  faculty  of 
never  speaking  nonsense:  he  never  gushed  in 
religion;  he  always  respected  the  inborn  nobil- 
ity of  men  and  addressed  himself  to  a  sinner  as 
if  he  were  a  child  of  God.  This  accounts  for 
the   almost  perfect  accord  which  was  at  once 


4  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

established  between  himself  and  his  hearers. 
He  did  not  deal  out  to  them  the  terrors  of  the 
Lord,  but  he  drew  them  by  the  silken  cords  of 
love  to  see  some  phase  of  the  great  Father  that 
had  escaped  their  notice,  and  he  left  them 
nearer  to  the  kingdom  of  God  than  they  were 
before.  He  was  not  simply  a  great  preacher, 
but  a  master  of  the  oratory  of  the  heart.  It 
was  possible  sometimes  to  say  that  his  method 
was  not  logical,  and  that  the  intellectual  appeal 
could  have  been  improved,  but  no  one  could 
listen  to  him  for  five  minutes  without  feeling 
that  this  man  had  a  message  from  God,  and  that 
he  was  trying  to  bring  men  nearer  to  the  Christ 
whom  he  loved  and  served.  The  greatness  of 
his  preaching  lay  in  its  complete  separation 
from  his  own  personality.  This  may  seem  a 
paradox;  but  when  one  considers  addresses  like 
those  contained  in  this  volume  and  analyzes 
them  to  see  what  the  method  was  and  what  part 
Phillips  Brooks  had  in  it,  he  is  surprised  to  find 
that  the  same  things  might  have  been  said  by 
any  one  else,  if  he  knew  how  to  present  them 
with  equal  grace  and  truth. 


INTBOJDUCTION.  6 

Phillips  Brooks  was  at  his  best  often  in  his 
more  familiar  talks,  in  his  confirmation  ad- 
dresses to  his  own  people,  in  his  conferences 
with  young  men,  in  his  Lenten  addresses  to  his 
own  people,  and  especially  in  his  short  sermons 
at  the  Noon-Lent  service  in  St.  Paul's  Church. 
For  several  years  he  was  always  on  the  list  of 
special  preachers  at  this  service,  and  for  the 
last  two  years  the  ancient  edifice  has  been 
crowded  to  overflowing  during  the  days  that  he 
spoke.  His  addresses  were  listened  to  eagerly 
by  the  brainy  men  of  State  Street,  the  mer- 
chants and  the  lawyers  of  the  city,  and  by  the 
devout  women  of  the  Back  Bay,  and  by  the 
poor  and  plain  men  who  found  a  sitting  at  the 
noon  hour  in  St.  Paul's  Church  in  order  to  see 
how  beautiful  life  was.  as  Bishop  Brooks  was 
able  to  set  it  forth  in  the  Christian  light.  He 
knew  how  to  touch  all  the  keys  of  the  human 
heart,  and  yet  he  touched  them  like  a  man  of 
genius  whose  spirit  had  been  consecrated  to 
Jesus  Christ.  No  one  could  equal  him  in  these 
appeals  and  presentations  of  truth;  they  were 
his  own  fashionings  of  the  Gospel;  and  in  the 


6  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

discourses  here  presented,  most  of  which  were 
taken  down  from  his  lips  by  the  short-hand 
reporters,  he  finds  an  utterance  that  is  equal  to 
anything  that  he  ever  said.  He  had  the  natural 
way  of  putting  things,  the  habit  of  the  orator 
and  the  preacher  who  moulds  language  and 
thought  as  the  potter  does  his  clay. 

When  I  once  ventured  to  say  to  Emerson  what 
his  poetry  had  done  for  me,  he  instantly  replied, 
as  I  sat  by  his  plain  table  in  that  memorable 
study  where  he  wrote  his  "  Essays,  '^  "  I  am  not 
a  poet;  I  have  not  the  lyrical  faculty;  I  can 
only  speak  imperfectly  in  plain  prose."  I  be- 
lieve that  I  am  the  only  person  who  ever  inter- 
viewed Phillips  Brooks  with  his  own  consent, 
but  I  never  dared  to  ask  him  how  he  made  his 
sermons.  One  of  his  manuscript  sermons  he 
kindly  loaned  to  me,  and  I  studied  it  more 
faithfully  than  any  boy  ever  learned  his  lesson 
in  Greek.  It  was  a  sermon  printed  by  his  per- 
mission in  the  Andover  Review  for  May,  1892, 
and  which  let  one  into  the  very  heart  of  his 
intellectual  and  religious  life.  I  found  that  it 
had  been  used  on  three  several  occasions,  and 


INTRODUCTION,  7 

that  it  expressed*  his  theological  creed  more 
completely  than  anything  he  had  ever  said 
before.  When  I  remarked  to  him,  as  a  reason 
for  asking  the  loan  of  this  manuscript  for  a 
special  purpose,  that  it  expressed  in  a  nutshell 
his  intellectual  and  religious  position,  he  as- 
sented to  my  statement,  but,  though  he  gave  me 
the  opportunity  to  ask  any  number  of  questions 
in  the  privacy  of  this  interview,  which  was  to 
enable  me  to  write  correctly  of  him,  I  could  not 
bring  myself  to  touch  upon  any  of  the  reserves 
of  a  great  soul. 

And  yet  he  gave  me  in  the  confidence  of 
this  interview  more  than  I  asked  for,  more 
than  I  deserved  to  receive,  and  I  felt  after 
the  talk  was  ended,  which  was  simply  to  enable 
me  to  speak  the  truth  about  him,  that  I  had 
seen  deeper  into  this  man's  inmost  life  than  I 
had  ever  seen  into  the  springs  of  motive  in  any 
other  man  whom  I  had  been  permitted  to  know. 
That  November  day  when  I  sat  alone  with  him 
in  his  study,  and  he  allowed  me  to  ask  him  close 
personal  questions,  was  a  red-letter  day  in  my 
life,  and  it  revealed  to  me  things   about  him 


8  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

that  I  had  not  understood  before.  Bishop  Clark 
says  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  transparent 
men  he  ever  knew,  and  I  found  him  in  this 
conversation  as  simple  as  a  child  in  telling  me 
more  about  himself  than  I  had  any  right  to  ask 
for.  The  week  before  he  died,  I  met  him  at 
the  Diocesan  House  and  received  from  him  the 
kindest  possible  words  about  a  little  book  of 
mine,  recently  published,  but  he  said  that  I 
might  have  been  kinder  to  the  Low  Churchmen 
of  sixty  or  seventy  years  ago  than  I  had  allowed 
myself  to  be,  and  when  I  asked  him  if  I  might 
send  a  copy  of  the  book  to  him,  his  reply  was 
so  overwhelmingly  gracious  that  I  felt  it  to  be 
an  honor  to  myself  to  have  this  privilege.  Alas ! 
this  was  the  last  word  that  I  ever  had  with  him. 
We  shook  hands,  and  his  beaming  smile  was  the 
last  gleam  of  that  wonderful  face  that  I  was  to 
have  in  this  life.  He  was  the  noblest  and  man- 
liest person,  with  the  largest  heart,  the  largest 
charity,  and  the  most  comprehensive  spirit  that 

I  have  ever  known. 

Julius  H.  Ward. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.  The  Beauty  of  a  Life  of  Service     .     .  15 

II.     Thought  and  Action 41 

III.  The  Duty  of  the  Christian  Business  Man  71 

IV.  True  Liberty    ..." 97 

V.  The  Christ  in  whom  Christians  Believe  119 

VI.     Abraham  Lincoln      .     .     • 151 


ILLUSTRATIONS, 

Portrait,  Phillips  Brooks      .        .        .        Frontispiece 
Portrait,  Abraham  Lincoln   .        .        .        .        .150 


THE 

BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE. 


I  SHOULD  like  to  read  to  you  again  the  words 
of  Je^us  from  the  8th  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of 
St.  John: 

"Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which  be- 
lieved on  Him,  if  ye  continue  in  My  word,  then 
are  ye  My  disciples  indeed;  and  ye  shall  know 
the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free. 
They  answered  him,  We  be  Abraham's  seed,  and 
were  never  in  bondage  to  any  man;  how  sayest 
Thou,  ye  shall  be  made  free?  Jesus  answered 
them.  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  whosoever 
committeth  sin  is  the  servant  of  sin.  And  the 
servant  abideth  not  in  the  house  forever,  but 
the  Son  abideth  ever.  If  the  Son,  therefore, 
shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free  indeed." 

I  want  to  speak  to  you  to-day  about  the  pur- 
pose and  the  result  of  the  freedom  which  Christ 
gives  to  His  disciples  and  the  freedom  into 
15 


16  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

which  man  enters  when  he  fulfils  his  life.  The 
purpose  and  result  of  freedom  is  service.  It 
sounds  to  us  at  first  like  a  contradiction,  like  a 
paradox.  Great  truths  very  often  present  them- 
selves to  us  in  the  first  place  as  paradoxes,  and 
it  is  only  when  we  come  to  combine  the  two 
different  terms  of  which  they  are  composed  and 
see  how  it  is  only  by  their  meeting  that  the 
truth  does  reveal  itself  to  us,  that  the  truth  does 
become  known.  It  is  by  this  same  truth  that 
God  frees  our  souls,  not  from  service,  not  from 
duty,  but  into  service  and  into  duty,  and  he  who 
mistakes  the  purpose  of  his  freedom  mistakes 
the  character  of  his  freedom.  He  who  thinks 
that  he  is  being  released  from  the^work,  and  not 
set  free  in  order  that  he  may  "accomplish  that 
work,  mistakes  the  Christ  from  whom  the  free- 
dom comes,  mistakes  the  condition  into  which 
his  soul  is  invited  to  enter.  For  if  I  was  right 
in  saying  what  I  said  the  other  day,  that  the 
freedom  of  a  man  simply  consists  in  the  larger 
opportunity  to  be  and  to  do  all  that  God  makes 
him  in  His  creation  capable  of  being  and  doing, 
then  certainly  if  man  has  been  capable  of  ser- 
vice it  is  only  by  the  entrance  into  service,  by 
the  acceptance  of  that  life  of  service  for  which 
God  has  given  man  the  capacity,  that  he  enters 
into  the  fulness  of  his  freedom  and  becomes  the 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        17 

liberated  child  of  God.  You  remember  what  I 
said  with  regard  to  the  manifestations  of  free- 
dom and  the  figures  and  the  illustrations,  per- 
haps some  of  them  which  we  used,  of  the  way 
in  which  the  bit  of  iron,  taken  out  of  its  use- 
lessness,  its  helplessness,  and  set  in  the  midst 
of  the  great  machine,  thereby  recognizes  the 
purpose  of  its  existence,  and  does  the  work  for 
which  it  was  appointed,  for  it  immediately  be- 
comes the  servant  of  the  machine  into  which 
it  was  placed.  Every  part  of  its  impulse  flows 
through  all  of  its  substance,  and  it  does  the 
thing  which  it  was  made  to  do.  When  the  ice 
has  melted  upon  the  plain  it  is  only  when  it 
finds  its  way  into  the  river  and  flows  forth 
freely  to  do  the  work  which  the  live  water  has 
to  do  that  it  really  attains  to  its  freedom.  Only 
then  is  it  really  liberated  from  the  bondage  in 
which  it  was  held  while  it  was  fastened  in  the 
chains  of  winter.  The  same  freed  ice  waits 
until  it  so  finds  its  freedom,  and  when  man  is 
set  free  simply  into  the  enjoyment  of  his  own 
life,  simply  into  the  realization  of  his  own 
existence,  he  has  not  attained  the  purposes  of 
his  freedom,  he  has  not  come  to  the  purposes 
of  his  life. 

It  is  one  of  the  signs  to  me  of  how  human 
words  are  constantly  becoming  perverted  that 


18  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

it  surprises  us  when  we  think  of  freedom  as  a 
condition  in  which  a  man  is  called  upon  to  do, 
and  is  enabled  to  do,  the  duty  that  God  has  laid 
upon  him.  Duty  has  become  to  us  such  a  hard 
word,  service  has  become  to  us  a  word  so  full  of 
the  spirit  of  bondage,  that  it  surprises  us  at  the 
first  moment  when  we  are  called  upon  to  realize 
that  it  is  in  itself  a  word  of  freedom.  And  yet 
we  constantly  are  lowering  the  whole  thought 
of  our  being,  we  are  bringing  down  the  great- 
ness and  richness  of  that  with  which  we  have  to 
deal,  until  we  recognize  that  God  does  not  call 
us  to  our  fullest  life  simply  for  ourselves.  The 
spirit  of  selfishness  is  continually  creeping  in. 
I  think  it  may  almost  be  said  that  there  has 
been  no  selfishness  in  the  history  of  man  like 
that  which  has  exhibited  itself  in  man's  relig- 
ious life,  showing  itself  in  the  way  in  which 
man  has  seized  upon  spiritual  privileges  and 
rejoiced  in  the  good  things  that  are  to  come  to 
him  in  the  hereafter,  because  he  had  made  him- 
self the  servant  of  God.  The  whole  subject  of 
selfishness,  and  the  way  in  which  it  loses  itself 
and  finds  itself  again,  is  a  very  interesting  one, 
and  I  wish  that  we  had  time  to  dwell  upon  it. 
It  comes  into  a  sort  of  general  law  which  we  are 
recognizing  everywhere  —  the  way  in  which  a 
man  very  often,  in  his  pursuit  of  the  higher 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        19 

form  of  a  condition  in  which  he  has  been  living, 
seems  to  lose  that  condition  for  a  little  while 
and  only  to  reach  it  a  little  farther  on.  He 
seems  to  be  abandoned  by  that  power  only  that 
he  may  meet  it  by  and  by  and  enter  more 
deeply  into  its  heart  and  come  more  completely 
into  its  service.  So  it  is,  I  think,  with  the 
self-devotion,  consecration,  and  self-forgetful- 
ness  in  which  men  realize  their  life.  Very 
often  in  the  lower  stages  of  man's  life  he  forgets 
himself,  with  a  slightly  emphasized  individual 
existence,  not  thinking  very  much  of  the  pur- 
pose of  his  life,  till  he  easily  forgets  himself 
among  the  things  that  are  around  him  and  for- 
gets himself  simply  because  there  is  so  little  of 
himself  for  him  to  forget;  but  do  not  you  know 
perfectly  well  how  very  often  when  a  man's  life 
becomes  intensified  and  earnest,  when  he  becomes 
completely  possessed  with  some  great  passion 
and  desire,  it  seems  for  the  time  to  intensify  his 
selfishness?  It  does  intensify  his  selfishness. 
He  is  thinking  so  much  in  regard  to  himself 
that  the  thought  of  other  persons  and  their  in- 
terests is  shut  out  of  his  life.  And  so  very 
often  when  a  man  has  set  before  him  the  great 
passion  of  the  divine  life,  when  he  is  called  by 
God  to  live  the  life  of  God  and  to  enter  into  the 
rewards  of  God,  very  often  there  seems  to  close 


20  PERFECT  FBEEBOM. 

around  his  life  a  certain  bondage  of  selfishness, 
and  he  who  gave  himself  freely  to  his  fellow- 
men  before  now  seems,  by  the  very  intensity, 
eagerness,  and  earnestness  with  which  his  mind 
is  set  upon  the  prize  of  the  new  life  which  is 
presented  to  him  —  it  seems  as  if  everything 
became  concentrated  upon  himself,  the  saving 
of  his  soul,  the  winning  of  his  salvation.  That 
seat  in  heaven  seems  to  burn  so  before  his  eyes 
that  he  cannot  be  satisfied  for  a  moment  with 
any  thought  that  draws  him  away  from  it,  and 
he  presses  forward  that  he  may  be  saved.  But 
by  and  by,  as  he  enters  more  deeply  into  that 
life,  the  self-forgetfulness  comes  to  him  again 
and  as  a  diviner  thing.  By  and  by,  as  the  man 
walks  up  the  mountain,  he  seems  to  pass  out  of 
the  cloud  which  hangs  about  the  lower  slopes 
of  the  mountain,  until  at  last  he  stands  upon 
the  pinnacle  at  the  top,  and  there  is  in  the  per- 
fect light.  Is  it  not  exactly  like  the  mountain 
at  whose  foot  there  seems  to  be  the  open  sun- 
shine where  men  see  everything,  and  on  whose 
summit  there  is  the  sunshine,  but  on  whose 
sides,  and  half  way  up,  there  seems  to  linger  a 
long  cloud,  in  which  man  has  to  struggle  until 
he  comes  to  the  full  result  of  his  life?  So  it  is 
with  self-consecration,  with  service.  You  easily 
do  it  in  some  small  ways  in  the  lower  life.     Life 


BE  A  UTY  OV  A  LIFE  OF  SEE  VICE,        21 

becomes  intensified  and  earnest  with  a  serious 
purpose,  and  it  seems  as  if  it  gathered  itself 
together  into  selfishness.  Only  then  it  opens 
by  and  by  into  the  largest  and  noblest  works  of 
men,  in  which  they  most  manifest  the  richness 
of  their  human  nature  and  appropriate  the 
strength  of  God.  Those  are  great  and  unselfish 
acts.  We  know  it  at  once  if  we  turn  to  Him 
who  represents  the  fulness  of  the  nature  of  our 
humanity. 

When  I  turn  to  Jesus  and  think  of  Him  as  the 
manifestation  of  His  own  Christianity  —  and  if 
men  would  only  look  at  the  life  of  Jesus  to  see 
what  Christianity  is,  and  not  at  the  life  of  the 
poor  representatives  of  Jesus  whom  they  see 
around  them,  there  would  be  so  much  more 
clearness,  they  would  be  rid  of  so  many  difficul- 
ties and  doubts.  When  I  look  at  the  life  of 
Jesus  I  see  that  the  purpose  of  consecration, 
of  emancipation,  is  service  of  His  fellow-men. 
I  cannot  think  for  a  moment  of  Jesus  as  doing 
that  which  so  many  religious  people  think  they 
are  doing  when  they  serve  Christ,  when  they 
give  their  lives  to  Him.  I  cannot  think  of  Him 
as  simply  saving  His  own  soul,  living  His  own 
life,  and  completing  His  own  nature  in  the  sight 
of  God.  It  is  a  life  of  service  from  beginning 
to  end.     He  gives  Himself  to  man  because  He 


22  PERFECT  FREET>OM. 

is  absolutely  the  Child  of  God,  and  He  sets  up 
service,  and  nothing  but  service,  to  be  the  ulti- 
mate purpose,  the  one  great  desire,  on  which  the 
souls  of  His  followers  should  be  set,  as  His  own 
soul  is  set,  upon  it  continually. 

What  is  it  that  Christ  has  left  to  be  His  sym- 
bol in  the  world,  that  we  put  upon  our  churches, 
that  we  wear  upon  our  hearts,  that  stands  forth 
so  perpetually  as  the  symbol  of  Christ's  life? 
Is  it  a  throne  from  which  a  ruler  utters  his  de- 
crees? Is  it  a  mountain  top  upon  which  some 
rapt  seer  sits,  communing  with  himself  and 
with  the  voices  around  him,  and  gathering  great 
truth  into  his  soul  and  delighting  in  it?  No, 
not  the  throne  and  not  the  mountain  top.  It  is 
the  cross.  Oh,  my  brethren,  that  the  cross 
should  be  the  great  symbol  of  our  highest 
measure,  that  that  which  stands  for  consecra- 
tion, that  that  which  stands  for  the  divine  state- 
ment that  a  man  does  not  live  for  himself  and 
that  a  man  loses  himself  when  he  does  live  for 
himself  —  that  that  should  be  the  symbol  of  our 
religion  and  the  great  sign  and  token  of  our 
faith!  What  sort  of  Christians  are  we  that  go 
about  asking  for  the  things  of  this  life  first, 
thinking  that  it  shall  make  us  prosperous  to  be 
Christians,  and  then  a  little  higher  asking  for 
the  things  that  pertain  to  the  eternal  prosperity, 


BE  A  UTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SER  VICE.        23 

when  the  Great  Master,  who  leaves  us  the  great 
law,  in  whom  our  Christian  life  is  sxjiritually  set 
forth,  has  as  His  great  symbol  the  cross,  the 
cross,  the  sign  of  consecration  and  obedience? 
It  is  not  simply  suffering  too.  Christ  does  not  " 
stand  primarily  for  suffering.  Suffering  is  an 
accident.  It  does  not  matter  whether  you  and 
I  suffer.  "  Not  enjoyment  and  not  sorrow  "  is 
our  life,  not  sorrow  any  more  than  enjoyment, 
but  obedience  and  duty.  If  duty  brings  sorrow, 
let  it  bring  sorrow.  It  did  bring  sorrow  to  the 
Christ,  because  it  was  impossible  for  a  man  to 
serve  the  absolute  righteousness  in  this  world 
and  not  to  sorrow.  If  it  had  brought  joy,  and 
glory,  and  triumph,  if  it  had  been  greeted  at  its 
entrance  and  applauded  on  the  way.  He  would 
have  been  as  truly  the  consecrated  soul  that  He 
was  in  the  days  when,  over  a  road  that  was 
marked  with  the  blood  of  His  footprints.  He 
found  His  way  up  at  last  to  the  torturing  cross. 
It  is  not  suffering;  it  is  obedience.  It  is  not 
pain;  it  is  consecration  of  life.  It  is  the  joy  of 
service  that  makes  the  life  of  Christ,  and  for  us 
to  serve  Him,  serving  fellow-man  and  God  —  as 
he  served  fellow-man  and  God  —  whether  it  bring 
pain  or  joy,  if  we  can  only  get  out  of  our  souls 
the  thought  that  it  matters  not  if  we  are  happy 
or  sorrowful,  if  only  we  are  dutiful  and  faithful, 


24  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

and  brave  and  strong,  then  we  should  be  in  the 
atmosphere,  we  should  be  in  the  great  company 
of  the  Christ. 

It  surprises  me  very  often  when  I  hear  good 
Christian  people  talk  about  Christ's  entrance 
into  this  world,  Christ's  coming  to  save  this 
world.  They  say  it  was  so  marvellous  that 
Jesus  should  be  willing  to  come  down  from  His 
throne  in  heaven  and  undertake  all  the  strange 
sorrow  and  distress  that  belonged  to  Him  when 
He  came  to  save  the  world  from  its  sins.  Won- 
derful? There  was  no  wonder  in  it;  no  wonder 
if  we  enter  up  into  the  region  where  Jesus  lives 
and  think  of  life  as  He  must  have  thought  of 
life.  It  is  the  same  wonder  that  people  feel 
about  the  miracles  of  Jesus.  Is  it  a  wonder  that 
when  a  divine  life  is  among  men,  nature  should 
have  a  response  to  make  to  Him,  and  He  should 
do  things  that  you  and  Ij  in  our  little  humanity, 
find  it  impossible  to  do?  No,  indeed,  there  is 
no  wonder  that  God  loved  the  world.  There  is 
no  wonder  that  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  at  any 
sacrifice  undertook  to  save  the  world.  The 
wonder  would  have  been  if  God,  sitting  in  His 
heaven,  the  wonder  would  have  been  if  Jesus, 
ready  to  come  here  to  the  earth  and  seeing  how 
it  was  possible  to  save  man  from  sin  by  suffer- 
ing, had  not  suffered.     Do  you  wonder  at  the 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        25 

mother,  when  she  gives  her  life  without  a  hesi- 
tation or  a  cry,  when  she  gives  her  life  with  joy, 
with  thankfulness,  for  her  child,  counting  it  her 
privilege?  Do  you  wonder  at  the  patriot,  the 
hero,  when  he  rushes  into  the  battle  to  do  the 
good  deed  which  it  is  possible  for  him  to  do? 
No,  read  your  own  nature  deeper  and  you  will 
understand  your  Christ.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
He  should  have  died  upon  the  cross ;  the  wonder 
would  have  been  if,  with  the  inestimable  privi- 
lege of  saving  man.  He  had  shrunk  from  that 
cross  and  turned  away.  It  sets  before  us  that 
it  is  not  the  glories  of  suffering,  it  is  not  the 
necessity  of  suffering,  it  is  simply  the  beauty  of 
obedience  and  the  fulfilment  of  a  man's  life  in 
doing  his  duty  and  rendering  the  service  which 
it  is  possible  for  him  to  render  to  his  fellow-man. 
I  said  that  a  man  when  he  did  that  left  behind 
him  all  the  thought  of  the  life  which  he  was 
willing  to  live  within  himself,  even  all  the  high- 
est thought.  It  is  not  your  business  and  mine 
to  study  whether  we  shall  get  to  heaven,  even  to 
study  whether  we  shall  be  good  men;  it  is  our 
business  to  study  how  we  shall  come  into  the 
midst  of  the  purposes  of  God  and  have  the 
unspeakable  privilege  in  these  few  years  of 
doing  something  of  His  work.  And  yet  so  is 
our  life  all  one,  so  is  the  kingdom  of  God  which 


26  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

surrounds  us  and  enfolds  us  one  bright  and 
blessed  unity,  that  when  a  man  has  devoted 
himself  to  the  service  of  God  and  his  fellow-man, 
immediately  he  is  thrown  back  upon  his  own 
nature,  and  he  sees  now  —  it  is  the  right  place 
for  him  to  see  —  that  he  must  be  the  brave, 
strong,  faithful  man,  because  it  is  impossible  for 
him  to  do  his  duty  and  to  render  his  service, 
except  it  is  rendered  out  of  a  heart  that  is  full 
of  faithfulness,  that  is  brave  and  true.  There 
is  one  word  of  Jesus  that  always  comes  back  to 
me  as  about  the  noblest  thing  that  human  lips 
have  ever  said  upon  our  earth,  and  the  most 
comprehensive  thing,  that  seems  to  sweep  into 
itself  all  the  commonplace  experience  of  man- 
kind. Do  you  remember  when  He  was  sitting 
with  His  disci^Dles,  at  the  last  supper,  how  He 
lifted  up  His  voice  and  prayed,  and  in  the  midst 
of  His  prayer  there  came  these  wondrous  words : 
"For  their  sakes  I  sanctify  myself,  that  they 
also  might  be  sanctified  "?  The  whole  of  human 
life  is  there.  Shall  a  man  cultivate  himself? 
No,  not  primarily.  Shall  a  man  serve  the  world, 
strive  to  increase  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the 
world?  Yes,  indeed,  he  shall.  How  shall  he 
do  it?  By  cultivating  himself,  and  instantly 
he  is  thrown  back  upon  his  own  life.  "For 
their  sakes   I  sanctify  myself,  that  they  also 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        27 

might  be  sanctified."  I  am  my  best,  not  simply 
for  myself,  but  for  the  world.  My  brethren,  is 
there  anything  in  all  the  teachings  that  man  has 
had  from  his  fellow-man,  all  that  has  come  down 
to  him  from  the  lips  of  God,  that  is  nobler,  that 
is  more  far-reaching  than  that  —  to  be  my  best 
not  simply  for  my  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of 
the  world  into  which,  setting  my  best,  I  shall 
make  that  world  more  complete,  I  shall  do  my 
little  part  to  renew  and  to  recreate  it  in  the 
image  of  God?  That  is  the  law  of  my  existence. 
And  the  man  that  makes  that  the  law  of  his 
existence  neither  neglects  himself  nor  his  fel- 
low-men, neither  becomes  the  self-absorbed  stu- 
dent and  cultivator  of  his  own  life  upon  the  one 
hand,  nor  does  he  become,  abandoning  himself, 
simply  the  wasting  benefactor  of  his  brethren 
upon  the  other.  You  can  help  your  fellow-men, 
you  must  help  your  fellow -men ;  but  the  only  way 
you  can  help  them  is  by  being  the  noblest  and 
the  best  man  that  it  is  possible  for  you  to  be.  I 
watch  the  workman  build  upon  the  building 
which  by  and  by  is  to  soar  into  the  skies,  to  toss 
its  pinnacles  up  to  the  heaven,  and  I  see  him 
looking  up  and  wondering  where  those  pinnacles 
are  to  be,  thinking  how  high  they  are  to  be, 
measuring  the  feet,  wondering  how  they  are  to 
be  built,  and  all  the  time  he  is  cramming  a  rotten 


28  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

stone  into  the  building  just  where  he  has  set  to 
work.  Let  him  forget  the  pinnacles,  if  he  will, 
or  hold  only  the  floating  image  of  them  in  his 
imagination  for  his  inspiration;  but  the  thing 
that  he  must  do  is  to  put  a  brave,  strong  soul, 
an  honest  and  substantial  life  into  the  building 
just  where  he  is  now  at  work. 

It  seems  to  me  that  that  comes  home  to  us  all. 
Men  are  questioning  now  as  they  never  have 
questioned  before  whether  Christianity  is  indeed 
the  true  religion  which  is  to  be  the  salvation  of 
the  world.  They  are  feeling  how  the  world 
needs  salvation,  how  it  needs  regeneration,  how 
it  is  wrong  and  bad  all  through  and  through, 
mixed  with  the  good  that  is  in  it  everywhere. 
Everywhere  there  is  the  good  and  the  bad,  and 
the  great  question  that  is  on  men's  minds  to-day, 
as  I  believe  it  has  never  been  upon  men's  minds 
before,  is  this :  Is  this  Christian  religion,  with 
its  high  pretensions,  this  Christian  life  that 
claims  so  much  for  itself,  is  it  competent  for  the 
task  that  it  has  undertaken  to  do?  Can  it  meet 
all  these  human  problems,  and  relieve  all  these 
human  miseries,  and  fulfil  all  these  human  hopes? 
It  is  the  old  story  over  again,  when  John  the 
Baptist,  puzzled  in  his  prison,  said  to  Jesus, 
"Art  thou  He  that  should  come?  or  look  we  for 
another?"     It  seems  to  me  that  the  Christian 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.         29 

Church  is  hearing  that  cry  in  its  ears  to-day: 
"Art  thou  He  that  should  come? ''  Can  you  do 
this  which  the  world  unmistakably  needs  to  be 
done  ? 

Christian  men,  it  is  for  us  to  give  our  bit  of 
answer  to  that  question.  It  is  for  us,  in  whom 
the  Christian  Church  is  at  this  moment  partially 
embodied,  to  declare  that  Christianity,  that  the 
Christian  faith,  the  Christian  manhood,  can  do 
that  for  the  world  which  the  world  needs.  You 
say,  "What  can  I  do?"  You  can  furnish  one 
Christian  life.  You  can  furnish  a  life  so  faith- 
ful to  every  duty,  so  ready  for  every  service,  so 
determined  not  to  commit  every  sin,  that  the 
great  Christian  Church  shall  be  the  stronger  for 
your  living  in  it,  and  the  problem  of  the  world 
be  answered,  and  a  certain  great  peace  come  into 
this  poor,  perplexed  phase  of  our  humanity  as  it 
sees  that  new  revelation  of  what  Christianity  is. 
Yes,  Christ  can  give  the  world  the  thing  it  needs 
in  unknown  ways  and  methods  that  we  have  not 
yet  begun  to  suspect.  Christianity  has  not  yet 
been  tried.  My  friends,  no  man  dares  to  con- 
demn the  Christian  faith  to-day,  because  the 
Christian  faith  has  not  been  tried.  Not  until 
men  get  rid  of  the  thought  that  it  is  a  poor 
machine,  an  expedient  for  saving  them  from  suf- 
fering and  pain,  not  until  they  get  the  grand 


30  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

idea  of  it  as  the  great  power  of  God  present  in 
and  through  the  lives  of  men,  not  until  then  does 
Christianity  enter  upon  its  true  trial  and  become 
ready  to  show  what  it  can  do.  Therefore  we 
struggle  against  our  sin  in  order  that  men  may 
be  saved  around  us,  and  not  simply  that  our  own 
souls  may  be  saved. 

Tell  me  you  have  a  sin  that  you  mean  to 
commit  this  evening  that  is  going  to  make  this 
night  black.  What  can  keep  you  from  commit- 
ting that  sin?  Suppose  you  look  into  its  conse- 
quences. Suppose  the  wise  man  tells  you  what 
will  be  the  physical  consequences  of  that  sin. 
You  shudder  and  you  shrink,  and,  perhaps,  you 
are  partially  deterred.  Suppose  you  see  the 
glory  that  might  come  to  you,  physical,  temporal, 
spiritual,  if  you  do  not  commit  that  sin.  The 
opposite  of  it  shows  itself  to  you  —  the  blessing 
and  the  richness  in  your  life.  Again  there  comes 
a  great  power  that  shall  control  your  lust  and 
wickedness.  Suppose  there  comes  to  you  some- 
thing even  deeper  than  that,  no  consequence  on 
consequence  at  all,  but  simply  an  abhorrence  for 
the  thing,  so  that  your  whole  nature  shrinks  from 
it  as  the  nature  of  God  shrinks  from  a  sin  that  is 
polluting  and  filthy  and  corrupt  and  evil.  They 
are  all  great  powers.  Let  us  thank  God  for  them 
all.     He  knows  that  we  are  weak  enough  to  need 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        31 

every  power  that  can  possibly  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  our  feeble  lives ;  but  if,  along  with  all  of 
them,  there  could  come  this  other  power,  if  along 
with  them  there  could  come  the  certainty  that  if 
you  refrain  from  that  sin  to-night  you  make  the 
sum  of  sin  that  is  in  the  world,  and  so  the  sum 
of  all  temptation  that  is  in  the  world,  and  so  the 
sum  of  future  evil  that  is  to  spring  out  of  temp- 
tation in  the  world,  less,  shall  there  not  be  a 
nobler  impulse  rise  up  in  your  heart,  and  shall 
you  not  say:  "I  will  not  do  it.  I  will  be 
honest,  I  will  be  sober,  I  will  be  pure,  at  least, 
to-night."  I  dare  to  think  that  there  are  men 
here  to  whom  that  appeal  can  come,  men  who, 
perhaps,  will  be  all  dull  and  deaf  if  one  speaks 
to  them  about  their  personal  salvation;  who,  if 
one  dares  to  picture  to  them,  appealing  to  their 
better  nature,  trusting  to  their  nobler  soul,  that 
there  is  in  them  the  power  to  save  other  men 
from  sin,  and  to  help  the  work  of  God  by  the 
control  of  their  own  passions  and  the  fulfilment 
of  their  own  duty,  will  be  stirred  to  the  higher 
life.  Men  —  very  often  we  do  not  trust  them 
enough  —  will  answer  to  the  higher  appeal  that 
seems  to  be  beyond  them  when  the  poor,  lower 
appeal  that  comes  within  the  region  of  their  self- 
ishness is  cast  aside,  and  they  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it. 


32  PERFECT  FBEEDOM, 

Oh,  tliis  marvellous,  this  awful  power  that 
we  have  over  other  people's  lives!  Oh!  the 
power  of  the  sin  that  you  have  done  years  and 
years  ago !  It  is  awful  to  think  pf  it.  I  think 
there  is  hardly  anything  more  terrible  to  the 
human  thought  than  this  —  the  picture  of  a  man 
who,  having  sinned  years  and  years  ago  in  a  way 
that  involved  other  souls  in  his  sin,  and  then, 
having  repented  of  his  sin  and  undertaken 
another  life,  knows  certainly  that  the  power, 
the  consequence  of  that  sin  is  going  on  outside 
of  his  reach,  beyond  even  his  ken  and  knowl- 
edge. He  cannot  touch  it.  You  wronged  a  soul 
ten  years  ago.  You  taught  a  boy  how  to  tell  his 
first  mercantile  lie ;  you  degraded  the  early  stand- 
ards of  his  youth.  What  has  become  of  that 
boy  to-day?  You  may  have  repented.  He  has 
passed  out  of  your  sight.  He  has  gone  years 
and  years  ago.  Somewhere  in  this  great,  multi- 
tudinous mass  of  humanity  he  is  sinning  and 
sinning  and  reduplicating  and  extending  the  sin 
that  you  did.  You  touched  the  faith  of  some 
believing  soul  years  ago  with  some  miserable 
sneer  of  yours,  with  some  cynical  and  sceptical 
disparagement  of  God  and  of  the  man  who  is  the 
utterance  of  God  upon  the  earth.  You  taught 
the  soul  that  was  enthusiastic  to  be  full  of  scep- 
ticisms and  doubts.    You  wronged  a  woman  years 


BE  A  UTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SEE  VICE.        33 

ago,  and  her  life  has  gone  out  from,  your  life, 
you  cannot  begin  to  tell  where.  You  have  re- 
pented of  your  sin.  You  have  bowed  yourself, 
it  may  be,  in  dust  and  ashes.  You  have  entered 
upon  a  new  life.  You  are  pure  to-day.  But 
where  is  the  sceptical  soul?  Where  is  the 
ruined  woman  whom  you  sent  forth  into  the 
world  out  of  the  shadow  of  your  sin  years  ago? 
You  cannot  touch  that  life.  You  cannot  reach 
it.  You  do  not  know  where  it  is.  No  steps  of 
yours,  quickened  with  all  your  earnestness,  can 
pursue  it.  No  contrition  of  yours  can  draw  back 
its  consequences.  Eemorse  cannot  force  the 
bullet  back  again  into  the  gun  from  which  it 
once  has  gone  forth.  It  makes  life  awful  to  the 
man  who  has  ever  sinned,  who  has  ever  wronged 
and  hurt  another  life  because  of  this  sin,  because 
no  sin  ever  was  done  that  did  not  hurt  another 
life.  I  know  the  mercy  of  our  God,  that  while 
He  has  put  us  into  each  other's  power  to  a  fear- 
ful extent,  He  never  will  let  any  soul  absolutely 
go  to  everlasting  ruin  for  another's  sin;  and  so 
I  dare  to  see  the  love  of  God  pursuing  that  lost 
soul  where  you  cannot  pursue  it.  But  that  does 
not  for  one  moment  lift  the  shadow  from  your 
heart,  or  cease  to  make  you  tremble  when  you 
think  of  how  your  sin  has  outgrown  itself  and 
is  running  far,  far  away  where  you  can  never 
follow  it. 


34  PEBFECT  FREEDOM. 

Thank  God  tlie  other  thing  is  true  as  well. 
Thank  God  that  when  a  man  does  a  bit  of  ser- 
vice, however  little  it  may  be,  of  that  too  he  can 
never  trace  the  consequences.  Thank  God  that 
that  which  in  some  better  moment,  in  some  nobler 
inspiration,  you  did  ten  years  ago  to  make  your 
brother's  faith  a  little  more  strong,  to  let  your 
shop  boy  confirm  and  not  doubt  the  confidence 
in  man  which  he  had  brought  into  his  business, 
to  establish  the  purity  of  a  soul  instead  of  stain- 
ing it  and  shaking  it,  thank  God,  in  this  quick, 
electric  atmosphere  in  which  we  live,  that,  too, 
runs  forth.  Do  not  say  in  your  terror,  "  I  will 
do  nothing."  You  must  do  something.  Only 
let  Christ  tell  you  —  let  Christ  tell  you  that 
there  is  nothing  that  a  man  rests  upon  in  the 
moment,  that  he.  thinks  of,  as  he  looks  back 
upon  it  when  it  has  sunk  into  the  past,  with  any 
satisfaction,  except  some  service  to  his  fellow- 
man,  some  strengthening  and  helping  of  a  human 
soul. 

Two  men  are  walking  down  the  street  together 
and  talking  away.  See  what  different  conditions 
those  two  men  are  in.  One  of  them  has  his  soul 
absolutely  full  of  the  desire  to  help  his  fellow- 
man.  He  peers  into  those  faces  as  he  goes,  and 
sees  the  divine  possibility  that  is  in  them,  and 
he  sees  the  divine  nature  everywhere.     They  are 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SEE  VICE,        35 

talking  about  the  idlest  trifles,  about  the  last  bit 
of  local  Boston  politics.  But  in  their  souls  one 
of  those  men  has  consecrated  himself,  with  the 
new  morning,  to  the  glorious  service  of  God,  and 
the  other  of  them  is  asking  how  he  may  be  a 
little  richer  in  his  miserable  wealth  when  the 
day  sinks.  Oh,  we  look  into  the  other  world 
and  read  the  great  words  and  hear  it  said.  Between 
me  and  thee,  this  and  that,  there  is  a  great  gulf 
fixed ;  and  we  think  of  something  that  is  to  come 
in  the  eternal  life.  Is  there  any  gulf  in  eter- 
nity, is  there  any  gulf  between  heaven  and  hell 
that  is  wider,  and  deeper,  and  blacker,  that  is 
more  impassable  than  that  gulf  which  lies  be- 
tween these  two  men  going  upon  their  daily  way? 
Oh,  friends,  it  is  not  that  God  is  going  to  judge 
us  some  day.  That  is  not  the  awful  thing.  It 
is  that  God  knows  us  now.  If  I  stop  an  instant 
and  know  that  God  knows  me  through  all  these 
misconceptions  and  blunders  of  my  brethren, 
that  God  knows  me  —  that  is  the  awful  thing. 
The  future  judgment  shall  but  tell  it.  It  is  here, 
here  upon  my  conscience,  now.  It  is  awful  to 
think  how  the  commonplace  things  that  men  can 
do,  the  commonplace  thoughts  that  men  can 
think,  the  commonplace  lives  that  men  can  live, 
are  but  in  the  bosom  of  the  future.  The  thing 
that  impresses  me  more  and  more  is  this  —  that 


36  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

we  only  need  to  have  extended  to  the  multitude 
that  which  is  at  this  moment  present  in  the  few, 
and  the  world  really  would  be  saved.  There  is 
but  the  need  of  the  extension  into  a  multitude  of 
souls  of  that  which  a  few  souls  have  already 
attained  in  their  consecration  of  themselves  to 
human  good,  and  to  the  service  of  God,  and  I 
will  not  say  the  millennium  would  have  come, 
I  don't  know  much  about  the  millennium,  but 
heaven  would  have  come,  the  new  Jerusalem 
would  be  here.  There  are  men  enough  in  this 
church  this  morning,  there  are  men  enough  sit- 
ting here  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  to-day, 
if  they  were  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  God  and 
counted  it  the  great  privilege  of  their  life,  to  do 
the  work  of  God  —  there  are  men  enough  here  to 
save  this  city,  and  to  make  this  a  glowing  city 
of  our  Lord,  to  relieve  its  poverty,  to  lighten  its 
darkness,  to  lift  up  the  cloud  that  is  upon  hearts, 
to  turn  it  into  a  great,  I  will  not  say  psalm- 
singing  city,  but  God-serving,  God-abiding  city, 
to  touch  all  the  difficult  problems  of  how  society 
and  government  ought  to  be  organized  then  with 
a  power  with  which  they  should  yield  their  diffi- 
culty and  open  gradually.  The  light  to  measure 
would  be  clear  enough,  if  only  the  spirit  is 
there.  Give  me  five  hundred  men,  nay,  give 
me  one  hundred  men  of  the  spirit  that  I  know 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE,        37 

to-day  in  three  men  that  I  well  understand,  and 
I  will  answer  for  it  that  the  city  shall  be  saved. 
And  you,  my  friend,  are  one  of  the  five  hundred 
—  you  are  one  of  the  one  hundred. 

"Oh,  but,''  you  say,  "is  not  this  slavery  over 
again?  You  have  talked  about  freedom,  and 
here  I  am  once  more  a  slave.  I  had  about  got 
free  from  the  bondage  of  my  fellow-men,  and 
here  I  am  right  in  the  midst  of  it  again.  What 
has  become  of  my  personality,  of  my  indepen- 
dence, if  I  am  to  live  thus  ?  "  Aye,  you  have  got 
to  learn  what  every  noblest  man  has  always 
learned,  that  no  man  becomes  independent  of  his 
fellow-men  excepting  in  serving  his  fellow-men. 
You  have  got  to  learn  that  Christianity  comes  to 
us  not  simply  as  a  luxury  but  as  a  force,  and  no 
man  who  values  Christianity  simply  as  a  luxury 
which  he  possesses  really  gets  the  Christianity 
which  he  tries  to  value.  Only  when  Christianity 
is  a  force,  only  when  I  seek  independence  of  men 
in  serving  men,  do  I  cease  to  be  a  slave  to  their 
whims.  I  must  dress  as  they  think  I  ought  to 
"dress;  I  must  walk  in  the  streets  as  they  think 
I  ought  to  walk;  I  must  do  business  just  after 
their  fashion;  I  must  accept  their  standards; 
but  when  Christ  has  taken  possession  of  me  and 
I  am  a  total  man,  I  am  more  or  less  independent 
of  these  men.     Shall  I  care  about  their  little 


38  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

whims  and  oddities?  Shall  I  care  about  how 
they  criticise  the  outside  of  my  life?  Shall  I 
peer  into  their  faces  as  I  meet  them  in  the  street, 
to  see  whether  they  approve  of  me  or  not?  And 
yet  am  I  not  their  servant?  There  is  nothing 
now  I  will  not  do  to  serve  them,  there  is  nothing 
now  I  will  not  do  to  save  them.  If  the  cross 
comes,  I  welcome  the  cross,  and  look  upon  it  with 
joy,  if,  by 'my  death  upon  the  cross  in  any  way, 
I  may  echo  the  salvation  of  my  Lord  and  save 
them.  Independent  of  them?  Surely.  And  yet 
their  servant?  Perfectly.  Was  ever  man  so 
independent  in  Jerusalem  as  Jesus  was?  What 
cared  He  for  the  sneer  of  the  Pharisee,  for  the 
learned  scorn  of  the  Sadducee,  for  the  taunt  of 
the  people  and  the  little  boys  that  had  been  taught 
to  jeer  at  Him  as  He  went  down  the  street,  and 
yet  the  very  servant  of  all  their  life?  He  says 
there  are  two  kinds  of  men  —  they  who  sit  upon 
a  throne  and  eat,  and  they  who  serve.  "  I  am 
among  you  as  he  that  serveth."  Oh,  seek  inde- 
pendence. Insist  upon  independence.  Insist 
that  you  will  not  be  the  slave  of  the  poor,  petty 
standards  of  your  fellow-men.  But  insist  upon 
it  only  in  the  way  in  which  it  can  be  insisted 
upon,  by  becoming  absolutely  the  servant  of 
their  needs.  So  only  shall  you  be  independent 
of  their  whims.     There  is  one  great  figure,  and 


BEAUTY  OF  A  LIFE  OF  SERVICE.        39 

it  has  taken  in  all  Christian  consciousness,  that 
again  and  again  this  work  with  Christ  has  been 
asserted  to  be  the  true  service  in  the  army  of  a 
great  master,  of  a  great  captain,  who  goes  before 
us  to  his  victory,  that  it  is  asserted  that  in  that 
captain,  in  the  entrance  into  his  army,  every 
power  is  set  free.  Do  you  remember  the  words 
that  a  good  many  of  us  read  or  heard  yesterday 
in  our  churches,  where  Jesus  was  doing  one  of 
His  miracles,  and  it  is  said  that  a  devil  was  cast 
out,  the  dumb  spake?  Every  power  becomes  the 
man's  possession,  and  he  uses  it  in  his  freedom, 
and  he  fights  with  it  with  all  his  force,  just  as 
soon  as  the  devil  is  cast  out  of  him. 

I  have  tried  to  tell  you  the  noblest  motive  in 
which  you  should  be  a  pure,  an  upright,  a  faith- 
ful, and  a  strong  man.  It  is  not  for  the  salva- 
tion of  your  life,  it  is  not  for  the  salvation  of 
yourself.  It  is  not  for  the  satisfaction  of  your 
tastes.  It  is  that  .you  may  take  your  place  in 
the  great  army  of  God  and  go  forward  having 
something  to  do  with  the  work  that  He  is  doing 
in  the  world.  You  remember  the  days  of  the 
war,  and  how  ashamed  of  himself  a  man  felt  who 
never  touched  with  his  finger  the  great  struggle 
in  which  the  nation  was  engaged.  Oh,  to  go 
through  this  life  and  never  touch  with  my  finger 
the  vast  work  that  Christ  is  doing,  and  when  the 


40  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

cry  of  triumph  arises  at  the  end  to  stand  there, 
not  having  done  one  little,  unknown,  unnoticed 
thing  to  bring  about  that  which  is  the  true  life 
of  the  man  and  of  the  world,  that  is  awful.  And 
I  dare  to  believe  that  there  are  young  men  in 
this  church  this  morning  who,  failing  to  be 
touched  by  every  promise  of  their  own  salvation 
and  every  threatening  of  their  own  damnation, 
will  still  lift  themselves  up  and  take  upon  them 
the  duty  of  men,  and  be  soldiers  of  Jesus  Christ, 
and  have  a  part  in  the  battle,  and  have  a  part 
somewhere  in  the  victory  that  is  sure  to  come. 
Don't  be  selfish  anywhere.  Don't  be  selfish, 
•most  of  all,  in  your  religion.  Let  yourselves 
free  into  your  religion,  and  be  utterly  unselfish. 
Claim  your  freedom  in  service. 


THOUGHT    AND    ACTION. 


I  WANT  once  more  to  read  to  you  these  words 
from  the  eighth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St. 
John : 

"  As  He  spake  these  words,  many  believed  on 
Him.  Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which  be- 
lieved on  Him,  If  ye  continue  in  My  word,  then 
are  ye  My  disciples  indeed ;  and  ye  shall  know 
the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free. 
They  answered  Him,  We  be  Abraham's  seed,  and 
were  never  in  bondage  to  any  man :  how  sayest 
Thou,  Ye  shall  be  made  free?  Jesus  answered 
them.  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  Whosoever 
committeth  sin  is  the  servant  of  sin.  And  the 
servant  abideth  not  in  the  house  for  ever :  but  the 
Son  abideth  ever.  If  the  Son  therefore,  shall 
make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free  indeed." 

There  are  two  great  regions  in  which  the  life 
of  every  true  man  resides.  They  are  the  region 
of  action  and  the  region  of  thought.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  separate  these  two  regions  from  one 
41 


42  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

another  and  to  bid  one  man  live  in  one  of  them 
alone  and  the  other  man  live  only  in  the  other 
of  them.  It  is  impossible  to  say  to  the  business 
man  that  he  shall  live  only  in  the  region  of 
action,  it  is  impossible  to  say  to  the  scholar  that 
he  shall  live  only  in  the  region  of  thought,  for 
thought  and  action  make  one  complete  and 
single  life.  Thought  is  not  simply  the  sea 
upon  which  the  world  of  action  rests,  but,  like 
the  air  which  pervades  the  whole  solid  substance 
of  our  globe,  it  permeates  and  fills  it  in  every 
part.  It  is  thought  which  gives  to  it  its  life. 
It  is  thought  which  makes  the  manifestation  of 
itself  in  every  different  action  of  man.  I  hope 
we  are  not  so  deluded  as  men  have  been  some- 
times, as  some  men  are  to-day,  that  we  shall  try 
to  separate  these  two  lives  from  one  another, 
and  one  man  say,  "  Everything  depends  upon  my 
action,  and  I  care  not  what  I  think,"  or,  as  men 
have  said,  at  least,  in  other  times,  "If  I  think 
right,  it  matters  not  how  I  act."  But  the  right 
thought  and  the  right  action  make  one  complete 
and  single  man. 

Now  we  have  been  speaking,  upon  these  Mon- 
day noons,  with  regard  to  the  freedom  of  that  ' 
highest  life  which  is  lived  under  the  inspiration 
of  Jesus  Christ  and  which  we  call  the  Christian 
life.     We  have  claimed  that  it  is  the  highest  of 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION,  43 

all  lives  because  it  is  the  freest  of  all  lives,  that 
it  is  the  freest  of  all  lives  because  it  is  the  highest, 
and  it  may  be  that  we  have  thought  that  it  was 
true  with  regard  to  the  active  life  in  which  men 
live,  it  may  be  that  we  have  somehow  persuaded 
ourselves,  that  it  has  seemed  to  us  as  if  there 
were  evidence  that  a  man  who  lived  his  life  in 
the  following  of  Jesus  Christ  was  a  free  man  in 
regard  to  his  activity.  But  now  there  comes  to 
us  the  other  thought,  and  it  is  impossible  for  us 
to  meet  together  as  we  have  met  together  again 
and  again  here  without  asking  with  regard  to 
the  other  region  of  man's  life  and  how  it  is  with 
man  there,  for  there  are  a  great  many  people,  I 
believe,  who  think  that  while  the  Christian  faith 
offers  to  man  a  noble  sphere  of  action  and  sets 
free  powers  that  would  otherwise  remain  un- 
changed, yet  when  we  come  to  the  region  of 
thought  or  belief,  there  it  is  inevitable  that  man 
should  know  himself,  when  he  accepts  the  faith 
of  Jesus  Christ,  it  is  inevitable  that  there  the 
man  should  become  less  free  than  it  has  been 
thought  that  he  was  before  the  blessed  Saviour 
was  accepted  as  the  master  and  the  ruler  of  his 
life.  Men  say  to  themselves  and  to  one  another, 
^'Yes,  I  shall  be  freer  to  act,  I  shall  be  nobler 
in  my  action,  but  I  shall  certainly  enchain  mind 
and  spirit,  I  shall  certainly  bind  myself  to  think 


44  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

away  from  the  rich  freedom  of  thought  in  which 
I  have  been  inclined  to  live."  We  make  very 
much  of  free  thought  in  these  days.  Let  us 
always  remember  that  free  thought  means  the 
opportunity  to  think,  and  not  the  opportunity 
not  to  think.  We  rejoice  in  the  way  in  which 
our  fathers  came  to  this  country  and  in  their 
children  perpetuated  the  purpose  of  their  com- 
ing, in  order  that  they  might  have  freedom  to 
worship  God.  Do  we  worship  God?  Simply  to 
have  attained  freedom  and  not  to  use  freedom  for 
its  true  purpose,  not  to  live  within  the  world  of 
freedom  according  to  the  life  which  is  given  to 
us  there  —  that  is  to  do  dishonor  to  the  freedom, 
to  disown  the  purpose  for  which  the  freedom  has 
been  given  to  us.  I  want  to  speak  to  you  then, 
while  I  may  speak  to-day,  with  regard  to  the 
freedom  of  the  Christian  thought. 

I  want  to  claim,  that  which  I  believe  with  all 
my  soul,  that  he  who  lives  in  the  faith  of  Jesus 
Christ  lives  in  the  freest  action  of  his  mental 
powers,  and  there  sees  before  him  and  makes 
himself  a  ]3art  of  the  large  world  into  which  man 
shall  enter,  in  which  he  has  perfect  liberty  and 
can  exercise  his  powers  as  he  could  never  have 
exercised  them  without.  It  is  not  very  strange 
to  think  that  men  should  have  sometimes  come 
to  think  that  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  a 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  45 

slavery  that  was  laid  upon  the  mind  of  man, 
because  very  often  those  who  have  been  the  dis- 
ciples of  that  religion,  those  who  have  been  the 
preachers  and  exponents  of  that  religion,  have 
claimed  just  exactly  that  thing.  They  have 
seemed  to  say  to  themselves  and  to  one  another, 
to  the  world  to  which  they  speak,  that  man  does 
give  up  the  powers  of  his  reason  when  he  enters 
into  the  powers  of  his  faith,  when  he  enters  into 
the  great  realm  of  faith.  Led  by  some  sort  of 
influence,  led  by  some  heresy  with  regard  to  the 
capacity  of  man,  or  with  regard  to  the  dealing  of 
God  with  man,  or  with  regard  to  the  purposes  of 
man's  life  upon  the  earth,  they  have  been  con- 
tent to  say  that  man  must  give  up  the  power  of 
thought  in  order  that*  he  might  enter  into  the 
Christian  life  and  attain  to  all  the  purposes  of 
the  Christian  discipline,  they  have  been  content 
to  say  that  man  must  give  up  the  noblest  power 
of  his  nature  in  order  to  enter  upon  the  highest 
life.  Well  might  a  man  hesitate,  hesitate  what- 
ever the  blessings  that  were  offered  to  him  in 
the  fulness  of  the  Christian  experience,  if  he 
were  called  upon  to  give  up  that  which  made  the 
very  centre  and  glory  of  his  life,  that  which 
linked  him  most  immediately  to  the  God  from 
whom  he  sprang.  It  would  be  as  if  in  the  storm 
the  ship  should  cast  over  its  engine  in  order  to 


46  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

save  its  own  life.  The  ship  might  be  saved  a 
little  while  from  going  down  in  the  depths  of 
despair,  but  it  never  would  reach  the  port  to 
which  it  had  been  bound;  it  never  would  accom- 
plish the  purpose  of  the  voyage  upon  which  it 
had  set  forth.  Let  us  put  absolutely  away  from 
us  all  such  thoughts.  Let  us  come  under  the 
inspiration  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself,  who  says  to 
us,  in  these  words  which  we  have  repeatedly  read 
to  one  another,  that  it  is  the  truth  tliat  is  to  make 
us  free,  and  that  the  entrance  of  the  man  there- 
fore into  that  freedom  is  the  largest  freedom  of 
every  region  of  man's  life. 

I  want  to  speak  to  you  of  the  way  in  which 
my  Master,  Jesus  Christ,  appeals  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  man,  of  the  way  in  which  He  comes  to 
us  in  the  noblest  part  of  our  nature  and  claims 
us  there  for  our  true  life  within  Himself.  I 
would  feel  altogether  wrong  if  I  let  you  depart, 
if  I  allowed  you  to  meet  here  with  me  week  after 
week  and  say  these  words  which  I  am  privileged 
to  speak  to  you  unless  I  did  thus  claim  that  the 
Christian  life  is  the  largest  life  of  the  human 
intellect,  that  in  it  the  noblest  and  central  powers 
of  man  shall  attain  to  their  true  liberty.  It  is 
given  for  us  perhaps  to  ask  ourselves  for  one 
moment  why  it  is  that  man  thinks,  is  ready  to 
think,  that  he  must  give  up  the  very  noblest  part 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  47 

of  his  life,  his  powers  of  thinking,  in  order  that 
he  may  enter  into  Christianity.  It  seems  to  me 
that  there  are  certain  reasons  for  it  which  we  can 
see ;  but  how  fallacious  those  reasons  are !  Is  it 
not  partly  because  man,  when  he  is  called  upon 
to  live  Jesus'  life,  when  he  is  called  upon  to  be 
a  spiritual  creature,  immediately  sees  that  he  is 
entering  into  a  new  and  different  region  from 
that  in  which  his  reason  has  always  been  exer- 
cised. He  has  been  dealing  with  those  things 
that  belong  to  this  earth,  with  the  different 
duties  and  opportunities  and  pleasures  that 
present  themselves  to  him  every  day,  and  that 
higher  and  loftier  region  into  which  he  has 
entered  seems  to  have  no  capacity  to  call  forth 
those  i)owers  which  he  has  been  using  in  this 
lower  region.  And  then  I  think  again  there  is 
upon  the  souls  of  men  who  deal  with  Chris- 
tianity one  great  conviction  which  is  very  deep 
and  strong.  It  is  that  the  Christian  religion 
cannot  be  absolutely  that  which  it  presents  itself 
to  human  mankind  as  being,  because  it  is  so  rich 
in  the  blessings  that  it  offers,  because  it  comes 
with  such  a  large  enjoyment  to  our  human  life, 
and  opens  such  great  opportunities  for  human 
living.  Is  it  not  because  it  seems  to  us  too  good 
to  be  true  that  we  sometimes  turn  away  from 
Christianity  and  think  that  if  we  enter  it  at  all 


48  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

we  must  enter  it  in  the  dark,  that  it  cannot  pos- 
sibly appeal  to  these  human  natures  and  make 
them  understand  its  truth,  and  let  them  take  it 
into  their  intelligence  that  thence  it  may  issue 
into  the  soul  and  become  the  guiding  power  of 
the  life?  Sometimes  it  seems  as  if  Christianity 
were  so  high  that  it  was  impossible  that  man 
should  attain  to  it,  as  if  it  were  something  alto- 
gether beyond  ourhaman^owers.  •  Do  you' want 
me,  a  creature  with  this  human  body  and  this 
human  relationship,  with  this--  body  and  with 
these  perpetual  bindings  and  connections  with 
my  fellow -men,  do  you  want  me  to  mount  up  and 
live  among  the  stars  and  hold  communion  with 
the  God  of  all?  And  if  you  want  me  to,  is  there 
any  possibility  of  my  doing  it?  Such  a  life  is 
glorious,  but  not  for  me.  It  goes  beyond  any 
capacity  that  I  possess.  Ask  yourselves,  my 
friends,  if  something  like  this  which  I  have  tried 
to  describe  is  not  very  often  in  your  minds  as  you 
hear  the  magnificent  invitations  which  Christ 
gives  to  the  human  soul  to  live  its  fullest  life, 
to  man  to  be  his  fullest  being.  There  are,  no 
doubt,  other  reasons  which  present  themselves 
to  men,  and  of  those  I  do  not  speak.  I  will  not 
think  that  the  men  who  are  listening  here  to  me 
now,  in  a  base  and  low  way  shrink  from  the  evi- 
dence of  Christianity  and  from  the  life  of  Christ 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  49 

because  they  do  not  want  to  enter  into  that  re- 
ligion because  it  would  make  too  great  demands 
upon  them  in  the  sacrifices  that  they  would  be 
called  upon  to  make.  It  is  said  sometimes,  and 
I  doubt  not  that  it  is  sometimes  true,  that  men 
will  not  see  the  power  and  truth  of  Christianity 
because  they  do  not  want  to  see  it.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  other  is  also  often  true,  and  it  is  that 
upon  which  we  would  much  rather  dwell.  Men 
sometimes  hesitate  at  Christianity  and  tremble, 
and  will  not  enter  into  the  great  region  that  is 
open  to  them,  because  they  do  not  want  it  so 
intimately.  The  critical,  the  sceptical  disposi- 
tion is  very  often  born  just  of  man's  perception 
of  the  glory  of  the  life  that  is  offered  to  him 
and  of  the  intense  desire  that  is  at  the  bottom  of 
his  soul  to  enter  into  that  life.  Who  is  the  man 
that  criticises  the  ship  most  carefully  as  she  lies 
at  the  wharf,  that  will  see  what  capacity  she  has 
for  the  great  voyage  that  she  has  set  before  her? 
Is  he  the  man  who  means  to  linger  carelessly 
upon  the  bank  and  never  sail  away,  or  the  man 
who  is  obliged,  if  she  can  sail  across  the  ocean, 
to  go  with  her?  Just  in  proportion  to  the  depth 
of  interest  with  which  we  look  upon  all  Christian 
truth  we  must  be  deep  questioners  with  regard 
to  the  truth  of  that  truth.  We  must  search  into 
all  its  evidence.     We  must  try  to  understand 


60  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

how  it  commends  itself  to  all  our  minds.  But 
first  of  all  we  want  to  know  certainly  what  Chris- 
tianity is,  if  it  is  able  to  deal  with  the  thing  with 
which  we  are  puzzling  or  never  to  give  an  intel- 
ligent definition  of  it. 

How  is  it  now?  I  go  to  a  certain  man  and 
ask  him,  "Why  do  you  not  believe  in  Chris- 
tianity? "  and  he  says,  "It  is  incredible.  I  can- 
not believe  in  it."  "What  is  it  that  you  cannot 
believe  in?"  and  then  he  takes  forsooth  some 
little  point  of  Christian  doctrine,  some  specula- 
tion of  some  Christian  teacher,  some  dogma  of 
some  Christian  church,  and  says,  "  That  is  incred- 
ible," as  if  that  were  Christianity.  Over  and 
over  again  men  are  telling  us  that  they  do  not 
believe  in  Christianity,  when  the  real  thing  that 
they  do  not  believe  in  is  something  that  is  no 
essential  part  of  Christian  faith  whatsoever. 
They  never  have  given  to  themselves  a  real 
definition  of  what  the  Christ  and  the  Christianity 
in  which  they  are  called  upon  to  believe,  into 
which  they  are  invited  to  enter,  really  is.  The 
lecturer  goes  up  and  down  the  land  and  in  the 
face  of  mighty  audiences  he  denounces  Chris- 
tianity. He  declares  it  to  be  unintelligible  and 
absurd,  to  be  monstrous  and  brutal.  And  when 
you  ask  what  it  is  that  he  is  thus  denouncing, 
what  it  is  that  he  is  thus  convicting  over  and 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  51 

over  again,  you  find  tliat  it  is  something  not 
simply  whicli  makes  no  part  of  Christianity,  but 
which  is  absolutely  hostile  to  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity itself.  Many  and  many  a  sceptical  lec- 
turer is  denouncing  that  which  Christian  men 
would,  with  all  their  hearts,  denounce ;  is  declar- 
ing that  to  be  untrue  which  no  true  Christian 
thinker  really  believes,  that  which  is  no  real  part 
of  the  great  Christian  faith,  which  is  our  glory. 
Do  not  think  when  I  speak  thus,  when  I  say  that 
there  are  things  attached  to  Christianity  which 
men  do  not  believe,  that  they  do  not  believe  in 
the  great  truth  of  Jesus,  without  them,  which 
men  denouncing  think  that  they  are  denouncing 
the  religion  which  is  saving  the  world.  Do  not 
think  that  I  am  simply  paring  away  our  great 
Christian  faith,  and  making  it  mean  just  as  little 
as  possible  in  order  that  men  may  accept  it  into 
their  lives.  I  am  coming  to  the  heart  and  soul 
of  it.  I  want  to  know,  if  my  life  is  all  bound  up 
with  this  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  I  want  to 
know  intrinsically  what  that  religion  is.  I  will 
scatter  a  thousand  things  which  in  the  devout 
thought  of  men  have  fastened  themselves  to  it. 
It  is  but  clearing  the  ship  for  action,  the  mak- 
ing it  ready  that  it  may  do  its  work,  the  binding 
everything  tight  just  before  the  storm  comes  on, 
for  that  is  just  the  moment  when  nothing  essen- 


52  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

tial  to  the  ship  itself  must  be  cast  away,  when  I 
make  sure,  if  I  can,  that  every  plank  and  timber, 
that  every  iron  and  brass  is  in  its  true  place  and 
ready  for  the  strain  that  may  be  put  upon  it. 

But  what,  then,  is  the  Christian  religion?  It 
is  "the  simple  following  of  the  divine  person, 
Jesus  Christ,  who,  entering  into  our  humanity, 
has  made  evident  two  things  —  the  love  of  God 
for  that  humanity,  and  the  power  of  that  human- 
ity to  answer  to  the  love  of  God.  The  one  thing 
that  the  eye  of  the  Christian  sees  and  never  can 
lose  is  that  majestic,  simple  figure,  great  in  its 
simplicity,  in  its  innocence,  in  its  purity  and  in 
its  unworldliness,  that  walked  once  on  this  earth 
and  that  walks  forever  through  the  lives  of  men, 
showing  Himself  to  human  kind,  manifest  in 
human  kind.  The  power  to  receive  it,  the  divine 
life  wakened  in  every  child  of  man  by  the  divine 
life  manifested  in  Jesus  Christ.  That  is  the 
great  Christian  faith,  and  the  man  becomes  a 
Christian  in  his  belief  when  he  assures  himself 
that  that  manifestation  of  the  divine  life  has 
been  made  and  is  perpetually  being  made,  and 
he  answers  to  that  appeal  of  the  Christ.  He 
manifests  his  belief  in  action  when  he  gives 
himself  to  the  education  and  the  guiding  of  that 
Christ,  that  in  him  there  may  be  awakened  the 
life  of  divinity,  which  is  his  true  human  life. 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  53 

Is  it  not  glorious,  this  absolute  simplicity  of  the 
Christian  faith?  It  is  not  primarily  a  truth;  it 
is  a  person,  it  is  He  who  walked  in  Galilee  and 
Judea,  who  sat  in  the  houses  of  mankind,  who 
hung  upon  the  cross,  in  order  that  He  might 
perfectly  manifest  how  God  could  live  and  how 
man  could  suffer  in  the  obedience  to  the  life  of 
God,  and  then  sent  forth  out  of  that  inspiration 
and  said,  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you  always,  doing  this 
very  thing,  being  this  very  Saviour,  even  to  the 
end  of  the  world."  That  which  the  Christian 
man  believes  to-day  as  a  Christian,  whatever 
else  he  may  believe  in  his  private  speculation,  in 
his  personal  opinion,  is  this:  The  life  of  God 
manifest  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  thenceforth 
going  out  into  the  world  wakening  the  divine 
capacity  in  every  man. 

You  say,  "  How  can  a  man  believe  that?  "What 
evidence  is  there  of  it?  "  The  personal  evidence 
of  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  It  is  the  self  testi- 
mony of  Christ  that  makes  the  assurance  of  the 
Christian  faith.  Does  that  sound  to  you  all 
unreasonable?  Do  you  turn  here  in  your  pew 
or  in  your  aisle  and  say,  *' After  all,  it  is  the 
old  story  which  I  have  tested  and  know  to  be 
untrue."  Suppose  yourself  back  there  in  Jeru- 
salem. Suppose  the  self  testimony  came  to  you 
from  the  very  person  of  Jesus  Christ.     Suppose 


54  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

the  words  that  He  absolutely  said  and  the  deeds 
that  He  absolutely  did  bore  to  you  a  testimony 
that  some  greater  than  a  human  life  was  there, 
and  that  then,,  as  you  pressed  close  to  Him  and 
became  a  part  of  His  life,  you  found  your  own 
life  awakened  and  became  a  nobler  man,  ashamed 
to  sin,  aspiring  after  holiness,  thinking  noble 
thoughts,  lifting  yourself  not  above  the  earth, 
but  lifting  yourself  with  the  whole  great  earth, 
which  then  is  taken  up  into  the  presence  of  God 
and  made  sacred  through  and  through.  I  know 
no  man  in  whom  I  trust  except  by  the  personal 
evidence  that  he  bears  to  me  of  himself.  I  know 
no  man's  nature  finally  but  by  that  testimony 
which  the  nature  gives  me  of  him.  Bring  me 
all  evidence  that  the  man  is  trustworthy,  and 
then  when  I  am  convinced  I  will  go  and  stand  in 
the  presence  of  that  man  himself,  and  he  shall 
tell  me.  So  the  world  stood,  so  the  world  stands 
to-day  in  the  presence  of  Jesus  Christ.  His 
presence  on  earth  is  an  historic  fact.  The  words 
that  He  spoke  are  written  down  in  a  true  record. 
The  deeds  that  He  did  are  the  history  of  the 
manifestations  of  His  character,  and  the  story 
of  His  Christendom  is  the  continued  manifesta- 
tion of  His  life,  the  divine  life  in  the  life  of 
man,  made  divine  through  Him.  Now,  a  ques- 
tion that  comes  in  the  Christian's  mind  is  ''  Why 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION,  55 

don't  people  believe  this?"  Why  should  they 
not?  Is  it  not  written  in  the  historical  record? 
Has  it  not  manifested  itself  in  the  experience  of 
mankind?  If  it  has,  surely  then  it  appeals  to 
man's  reason,  and  is  not  merely  the  act  of  the 
blind,  stupid  thing  which  we  call  faith,  but  it  is 
the  noblest  action  of  that  hour  in  which  I  believe, 
in  the  heavens  above  me  and  in  the  earth  under 
my  feet,  in  the  brother  with  whom  I  have  to  do 
in  the  long  course  of  history,  in  the  total  human- 
ity which  has  grandly  lived.  The  reason  that 
men  do  not  believe  it  is  that  of  course  there 
seems  to  be  to  them  some  strange  and  previous 
presumption  with  regard  to  it,  something  which 
makes  the  story  incredible.  They  say  it  is  the 
supernatural  in  it,  that  it  goes  beyond  the  or- 
dinary experience  of  man.  Ah!  it  seems  also 
strange  to  me,  the  ordinary  experience  of  man. 
Who  dares  to  dream  that  human  life  has  lived  its 
completest  and  shown  the  noblest  power  of 
receiving  God  into  itself?  Who  dares  to  think 
that  these  few  thousand  years  have  exhausted 
this  majestic  and  mysterious  being  that  we  call 
man?  Who  dares  to  think  of  his  own  life  that, 
in  these  few  thirty,  forty,  fifty  years  that  he  has 
lived,  he  has  known  and  shown  all  that  God  can 
do  in  and  for  him?  Who  dares  to  say  that  it  is 
impossible,  that  it  is  improbable,  that  he  who  is 


56  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

the  child  of  God  shall  receive  some  newer  and 
closer  access  to  his  father,  that  there  shall  come 
some  new  revelation  which  shall  be  written  not 
in  a  book,  not  upon  the  skies,  not  in  the  history 
of  human  kind,  not  on  the  rocks  under  our  feet, 
but  here  in  our  human  flesh,  that  there  shall  be 
an  incarnation,  that  the  God  who  is  perpetually 
trying  to  manifest  Himself  to  human  kind  should 
find  at  last,  should  take  at  last  the  most  exquisite, 
the  most  sensitive,  the  most  perfect,  the  most 
divine  of  all  material  on  which  to  write  His 
message,  and  in  that  human  nature  show  at  once 
what  God  was  and  what  man  is  ?  Until  there  be 
some  exhaustive  sight  of  human  nature  as  that, 
it  is  in  no  wise  improbable  that  there  would  be 
that  which  outgoes  our  observation,  that  once  in 
the  long  music  of  our  human  life  the  great  key- 
note of  humanity  shall  be  struck,  that  once  in 
our  great  groping  after  the  God  who  made  us  He 
shall  seem  to  draw  the  veil  aside,  nay,  more  than 
that,  shall  come  and  like  the  sunlight  crowd 
Himself  through  every  cloud  until  He  takes 
possession  of  our  humanity. 

"Ay,"  but  you  say,  "those  miracles  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  Christ,  how  strange  those  are;  how 
strange  that  He  should  have  touched  the  water 
and  the  water  become  wine ;  how  strange  that  He 
should  have  called  to  the  dead  man  and  he  should 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  57 

have  come  forth  from  the  tomb ;  how  strange  that 
He  should  have  spoken  to  the  waters  and  the 
storm  grow  still !  "  Ah,  my  friends,  it  seems  to 
me  that  there  again  we  are  dishonoring  nature  as 
just  before  we  did  dishonor  man.  There  again 
we  are  thinking  that  we  have  exhausted  the 
capacity  of  this  wondrous  world  in  which  we 
live.  What  is  the  glory  of  that  world?  That 
it  answers  to  human  kind.  In  the  mystic  tradi- 
tion of  the  book  of  Genesis  it  is  told  how,  when 
God  first  made  man,  He  set  him  master  of  this 
world  and  all  its  powers;  and,  ever  since,  the 
world  has  been  answering  to  man,  who  is  its 
master,  and  every  message  that  comes  back  to 
him,  every  response  that  the  field  makes  to  the 
farmer,  or  that  the  rock  makes  to  the  scientist, 
is  but  an  assertion  and  the  culmination  and  the 
fulfilment  of  that  which  God  did  back  there. 
As  man  has  been,  so  has  the  world  responded 
to  his  touch  and  call.  Suppose  that  to-morrow 
morning  the  perfect  man  should  come,  not  the 
man  simply  of  the  twentieth  century  or  of  the 
twenty -first,  who  shall  be  greater  in  his  humanity 
than  we,  but  suppose  the  perfect  man,  the  perfect 
man  because  the  divine  man,  comes.  I  cannot 
dream  that  nature  shall  not  have  words  to  say 
and  a  response  to  make  to  him  that  it  will  not 
make  to  these  poor  hands  of  mine.     I  can  do 


58  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

something  with  the  rock  and  field,  I  can  do  some- 
thing with  the  sea  and  sky.  What  shall  he  do 
who  is  to  my  humanity  what  the  perfect  is  to 
the  absolutely  and  dreadfully  imperfect?  What 
shall  the  divine  man  do?  When  Paul  speaks  in 
that  great  verse  of  his  and  tells  us  how  the 
whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  waiting 
for  the  manifestation  of  the  Son  of  God,  the 
whole  future  history  of  human  science,  of  man's 
knowledge  and  use  of  the  world,  is  in  his  words. 
The  world  shall  know  man  as  fast  as  man  shows 
himself,  and  when  the  Son  of  God  shall  be  mani- 
fested, then  the  groaning  and  travailing  creation 
shall  set  all  its  powers  free,  and  with  the  knowl- 
edge with  which  it  floods  him  and  with  the 
usages  and  service  with  which  it  supplies  him, 
it  shall  claim  at  last  its  glory  as  the  servant,  the 
obedient  servant  of  man.  The  Son  of  Man  has 
come.  You  may  at  least  suppose  it  if  you  do  not 
believe  it.  And  if  He  came  to-morrow  morning 
would  not  this  whole  world  lift  itself  up  and 
answer  Him?  Who  can  say  what  the  hills  and 
valleys  and  trees  -and  oceans  and  seas  would 
have  to  say  to  Him  who  at  last  manifested  that 
which  the  world  had  been  waiting  and  groaning 
for,  the  manifestation,  the  complete  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Son  of  God?  That  is  the  reason  why 
I  claim  that  miracles  —  I  do  not  know  that  there 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  59 

have  not  been  fastened  upon  the  miraculous 
power  of  Jesus  stories  of  things,  thinking  that 
they  were  done  miraculously,  which  He  did  by 
what  we  choose  in  our  ignorance  to  call  the  ordi- 
nary powers  of  nature  —  but  I  do  know  that  the 
coming  into  the  world  must  have  been  more  to 
this  world,  that  it  would  have  been  the  most 
unnatural  and  incredible  thing  if  the  divine  man 
coming  here  had  been  to  the  world  and  the  world 
had  been  to  him  only  what  it  is  to  us. 

And  now  the  question  comes  to  each  one  of  us 
—  for  I  must  hasten  on  —  how  shall  a  man  get 
within  the  region  of  that  which  perhaps  you 
recognize,  which  I  do  not  see  how  you  can  help 
believing,  how  shall  a  man  get  within  the  region 
of  that  higher  power  and  let  it  be  the  rule  of  his 
life,  let  it  manifest  itself  through  him?  How 
do  you  get  within  the  power  of  any  force,  my 
friends?  Here  is  Christ,  a  force  if  He  is  any- 
thing, not  a  spectacle,  not  a  miracle,  not  a  mar- 
vel, not  wonderful  to  look  at,  but  a  force  to  feel. 
How  do  you  get  within  the  power  of  any  force? 
You  look  out  of  your  window,  and  men  say  the 
frost  is  freezing,  and  you  see  your  neighbors 
wrapping  their  cloaks  about  them  and  going 
down  the  street  as  if  they  were  cold.  Men  say 
that  a  storm  is  blowing,  and  you  see  them  shelter 
themselves  against  the  storm  that  blows.     How 


60  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

will  you  make  that  storm  a  true  thing  for  your- 
self? Go  out  into  it.  Let  the  frost  smite  your 
cheek,  let  the  rain  beat  into  your  face,  let  the 
wind  blow  upon  your  back,  and  then  you  know 
by  personal  experience  what  you  had  known  by 
your  observation  before.  And  so  I  say  that  only 
when  a  man  puts  himself  where  he  can  feel  the 
power  of  the  Christ,  where  it  is  possible  for  him, 
if  there  be  a  Christ,  if  Christ  be  all  that  the 
Christian  religion  claims  that  He  is,  only  when 
a  man  puts  himself  where  he  needs  and  must  have 
and  must  certainly  feel  that  Christ,  if  there  be 
a  Christ,  only  then  has  he  a  right  to  disbelieve 
if  the  Christ  be  not  there,  only  then  has  he  a 
right  to  believe  if  the  Christ  find  him  there. 
And  where  is  that?  When  a  m?ln  takes  up  the 
highest  duties,  when  he  accepts  the  noblest  life, 
when  he  lays  open  his  soul  to  the  great  exactions 
and  obligations  which  belong  to  him  in  his 
spiritual  nature,  when  he  tries  to  be  a  pure  man, 
a  devoted  man,  a  noble  man,  only  then  has  he  a 
chance  to  know  that  force  which  only  then  comes 
into  its  activity.  Only  when  a  man  tries  to  live 
the  divine  life  can  the  divine  Christ  manifest 
Himself  to  him.  Therefore  the  true  way  for 
you  to  find  Christ  is  not  to  go  groping  in  a  thou- 
sand books.  It  is  not  for  you  to  try  evidences 
about  a  thousand  things  that  people  have  believed 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION,  61 

of  Him,  but  it  is  for  you  to  undertake  so  great  a 
life,  so  devoted  a  life,  so  pure  a  life,  so  service- 
able a  life,  that  you  cannot  do  it  except  by  Christ, 
and  then  se^  whether  Christ  helps  you.  See 
whether  there  comes  to  you  the  certainty  that 
you  are  a  child  of  God,  and  the  manifestation  of 
the  child  of  God  becomes  the  most  credible,  the 
most  certain  thing  to  you  in  all  of  history. 

It  may  have  been  that  such  moments  have 
been  in  some  of  your  lives.  Think  of  the  noblest 
moment  that  you  ever  passed,  of  the  time  when, 
lifted  up  to  the  heights  of  glory,  or  bowed  down 
into  the  very  depths  of  sorrow,  every  power  that 
was  in  you  was  called  forth  to  meet  the  exigency 
or  to  do  the  work.  Think  of  the  time  when  you 
.  stood  upon  the  mountain  top  or  plunged  into  the 
gulf.  Eemember  that  time  —  it  may  have  been 
the  death  of  your  little  child,  it  may  have  been 
your  own  sickness,  it  may  have  been  your  failure 
in  business,  it  may  have  been  the  moment  of 
your  complete  success  in  business,  when  you 
were  solemnized  as  the  great  shower  of  wealth 
poured  down  upon  you,  and  you  felt  that  now 
yoii  really  had  some  work  for  God  to  do  in  the 
world.  Ah,  look  back  to  that  moment  and  see  if 
then  it  seemed  so  strange  to  you  that  God  should 
come  into  the  presence  and  person  of  His  uni- 
verse, of  His  children,  and  take  possession  of 


62  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

their  life.  We  grow  so  easily  to  forget  our 
noblest  and  most  splendid  times.  It  seems  to 
me  there  is  no  maxim  for  a  noble  life  like  this : 
Count  always  your  highest  moments  your  truest 
moments.  Believe  that  in  the  time  when  you 
were  the  greatest  and  most  spiritual  man,  then 
you  were  your  truest  self.  Men  do  just  the 
other  thing.  They  say  it  was  "  an  exception,  a 
derangement  of  my  nature,  an  exaltation,  a 
frenzy,  it  was  something  that  I  must  not  expect 
again."  How  about  the  time  when  they  plunged 
into  baseness  and  made  their  soul  like  a  dog's 
soul?  They  shudder  at  the  thought  of  that 
because  they  think  it  would  come  again.  ]N"ay, 
nay,  shudder  if  you  will  at  the  thought  of  that, 
but  believe  that  the  highest  you  ever  have  been 
you  may  be  all  the  time  and  vastly  higher  still 
if  only  the  power  of  the  Christ  can  occupy  you 
and  fill  your  life  all  the  time. 

I  said  that  there  were  many  things  that  people 
attached  to  Christianity  that  did  not  belong  to 
Christianity.  I  know  there  are.  It  is  impos- 
sible that  a  great  system  like  the  system  of 
Christ,  a  great  person  like  the  great  person  of 
Christ,  should  be  in  the  world,  and  men  not  have 
speculated  and  thought  in  regard  to  Him.  Those 
are  not  Christianity.  I  want  to-day,  if  I  may 
do  nothing   else,   to   tell  you    absolutely   how 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  63 

simple  and  single  the  Christian  faith,  the  Christ, 
really  is.  It  is  not  the  insxDiration  of  this  book 
or  any  theory  with  regard  to  its  inspiration.  It 
is  not  the  election  of  certain  souls  and  the  perdi- 
tion of  other  souls.  It  is  not  the  length  of  man's 
punishment,  whether  it  is  going  to  be  forever 
and  ever,  or  whether  man  is  to  go  to  his  restora- 
tion. It  is  not  even  the  constitution  of  the 
divine  life,  the  great  truth  of  the  way  in  which 
God  lives  within  His  own  nature.  None  of  these 
are  the  essence  of  the  Christian  faith,  but  simply 
this :  The  testimony  of  the  divine  in  man  to  the 
divine  in  man  that  lifts  the  man  up  and  says : 
"  For  me  to  be  brutal  is  unmanly ;  to  be  divine 
is  to  be  my  only  true  self."  Why  do  I  believe 
in  God?  If  some  man  asked  me,  when  on  the 
street,  I  think  I  should  have  an  answer  to  give 
him.  I  could  give  one  great  reason  —  two  great 
reasons  which  are  really  but  one  great  reason  — 
why  I  believe  in  God.  I  believe  in  God,  my 
friends,  I  believe  in  God  with  all  my  soul,  be- 
cause this  world  is  inexplicable  without  Him  and 
explicable  with  Him,  and  because  Jesus  Christ 
believed  in  Him;  and  it  was  Jesus  Christ  that 
showed  me  that  this  world  demanded  God  and 
was  inexplicable  without  Him ;  that  made  certain 
every  suspicion  and  dream  that  I  had  had  before, 
and  Jesus  Christ  believed  in  Him.    Shall  I  go  to 


64  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

the  expert  about  chemistry  or  geology  and  ask 
him  the  truth  with  regard  to  the  structure  of  the 
world  and  the  meeting  of  its  atoms  and  forces? 
And  shall  not  I  go  to  the  spiritual  expert,  to 
him  in  whom  the  spiritual  life  of  man  has  been 
clearest,  and  say,  "O  Christ,  tell  me  what  is 
the  centre  and  source  and  end  of  all?  "  When 
he  says  "  God,"  shall  I  not  believe  Him? . 

It  is  impossible,  as  I  have  suggested  to  you 
again  and  again  in  what  I  have  been  saying,  that 
a  man  can  have  his  mind  open  to  the  receipt  of 
the  truth  of  a  person  unless  he  be  a  certain  kind 
of  man  himself.  I  do  not  know  but  the  basest 
and  the  wickedest  man  who  lives  may  believe  in 
the  Copernican  theory,  or  that  two  and  two  make 
four,  yet  I  cannot  help  believing  that  if  he  were 
a  better  and  truer  man  he  would  believe  even 
those  truths,  outside  of  himself,  of  science  and 
arithmetic,  more  fully  and  deeply.  Men  were 
not  all  astray  in  the  first  thing  that  they  were 
seeking  after,  though  they  were  wofully  astray 
in  many  things  that  they  said  about  it,  when 
they  talked  about  faith  and  works.  Faith  enters 
in  through  the  soul  that  does  a  noble  deed,  and 
in  the  coming  in  of  that  faith  the  higher  deed 
becomes  possible  to  him.  Hear  the  words  that 
Jesus  said,  words  that  our  age  must  take  to  itself 
until  it  shall  be  wiser  than  it  is  to-day :  "  Blessed 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  65 

are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God." 
"  If  any  man  will  do  His  will,  he  shall  know  of 
the  doctrine,  whether  it  be  of  God."  Ponder 
those  words,  my  friends.  See  how  reasonable 
they  are.  See  how  important  they  are.  See 
how  they  have  the  secret  of  your  own  life,  of 
what  it  is  to  do,  of  what  it  is  to  be,  forever  and 
ever  sealed  up  in  them.  These  two  things,  I  am 
sure,  are  true  with  regard  to  the  method  of  belief 
—  that  no  man  can  ever  go  forward  to  a  higher 
belief  until  he  is  true  to  the  faith  which  he 
already  holds.  Be  the  noblest  man  that  your 
present  faith,  poor  and  weak  and  imperfect  as  it 
is,  can  make  you  to  be.  Live  up  to  your  present 
growth,  your  present  faith.  So,  and  so  only,  as 
you  take  the  next  straight  step  forward,  as  you 
stand  strong  where  you  are  now,  so  only  can  you 
think  the  curtain  will  draw  back  and  there  will 
be  revealed  to  you  what  lies  beyond.  And  then 
live  in  your  positives  and  not  in  your  negatives. 
I  am  tired  of  asking  man  what  his  religious  faith 
is  and  having  him  tell  me  what  he  don't  believe. 
He  tells  me  that  he  don't  believe  in  baptism  or 
inspiration  or  in  the  trinity.  If  I  asked  a  man 
where  he  w^as  going  and  he  told  me  he  was  not 
going  to  Washington,  what  could  I  know  about 
where  he  was  going?  He  would  not  go  any- 
where so  long  as  he  simply  rested  in  that  mere 


66  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

negative.  Be  done  with  saying  what  you  don't 
believe,  and  find  somewhere  or  other  the  truest, 
divinest  thing  to  your  soul  that  you  do  believe 
to-day,  and  work  that  out :  work  it  out  in  all  the 
action  and  consecration  of  the  soul  in  the  doing 
of  your  work.  This  I  take  to  be  the  real  free- 
dom of  Christian  thought  —  when  the  man  goes 
forward  always  into  a  fuller  and  fuller  belief  as  he 
becomes  obedient  to  that  which  he  already  holds. 
But  yet  I  know  I  have  not  touched  the  opin- 
ion, the  feeling,  nay,  I  will  say  the  black  preju- 
dice that  is  upon  many,  many  minds.  "Ah, 
but  you  have  bound  yourself, "  you  say.  "  You 
have  given  your  assent  to  a  certain  creed,  you 
believe  certain  dogmas.  To  put  it  as  simply  as 
you  have  put  it  to  us  this  morning,  you  believe 
a  certain  person.  I,  I  am  free,  I  believe  nothing, 
I  can  go  wandering  here  and  everywhere  and 
disbelieve  to  my  heart's  content."  Yes,  I  do 
believe  something,  and  I  thank  God  for  it.  But 
I  deny  with  all  my  intelligence  and  soul  the  very 
idea  that  in  believing  that  something  I  have  shut 
my  soul  to  evidence.  I  am  ready  to  hear  any 
man  living,  any  man  living  to-day  who  will  prove 
to  me  that  the  Christ  has  never  lived  and  that  he 
is  not  the  Lord  of  men.  I  will  listen  to  any  man 
who  is  in  earnest  and  who  is  sincere.  I  will  not 
listen  to  any  trifler,  caviller,  who  is  merely  try- 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  67 

ing  to  make  a  point  and  to  get  ahead  of  the  poor 
arguments  that  I  can  use ;  but  let  any  f ellow-maii 
come  to  me  with  an  earnest  face,  either  of  puzzled 
doubt,  or  of  earnest  and  convinced  unbelief,  and 
say  to  me,  "Are  you  not  wrong?"  or  "I  believe 
that  you  are  wrong,"  and  I,  of  course,  will  talk 
to  him.  Do  I  want  to  believe  anything  that 
cannot  be  proved  to  be  true,  anything  that  my 
intelligence  shall  not  receive?  Why  should  I 
believe  it?  Shall  I  trust  myself  to  the  ship 
merely  because  I  have  refused  to  examine  its 
timbers,  when  men  tell  me  that  it  is  unsound? 
Shall  I  throw  away  my  truthfulness  simply  for 
the  sake  of  holding  what  I  want,  what  I  choose 
to  call  the  truth?  It  is  not  because  it  is  safe,  it 
is  not  because  it  is  pleasan^  it  is  because  it 
seems  to  the  Christian  man  to  be  true,  that  the 
Christian  man  believes  in  the  presence,  the  life, 
the  power  of  Jesus  Christ.  Therefore  come,  let 
me  hear  every  one  of  you  what  you  have  to  say. 
Let  me  see  where  that  upon  which  my  soul  rests 
for  its  very  life  breaks  down;  but,  until  I  hear, 
I  will  go  forward,  strong  in  the  assurance  of  that 
which  takes  hold  of  all  my  life,  convinces  my 
reason,  lays  hold  of  my  affections,  enlarges  my 
actions,  and  opens  my  whole  being  to  the  free- 
dom of  the  child  of  God. 
And  why  should  not  you,  my  friends,  why 


68  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

should  not  you?  I  honor  the  sceptic,  the  faith- 
ful land  devout  sceptic,  with  all  my  soul.  I  am 
no  scorner  of  the  man  who,  without  scorn,  finds 
it  impossible  to  accept  that  which  to  my  soul 
seems  to  be  the  absolute  truth.  I  will  scorn 
only  that  which  God  scorns.  He  scorns  the 
scorner,  and  only  the  scorning  man  is  worthy  of 
the  scorn  of  human  kind.  But  while  I  honor 
the  sceptic,  while  I  invite  him  to  make  manifest 
his  scepticism,  not  merely  for  his  sake  but  for 
my  own,  I  will  not  hold,  I  cannot  hold  that  he  is 
living  a  larger  life  than  the  man  whom  the  Christ 
invites  to  every  noble  duty,  to  every  faithful 
fulfilment  of  himself.  I  will  feel  that  he,  per- 
haps by  the  necessity  of  his  nature,  perhaps  by 
his  circumstances,  perhaps  \}^  something  which 
came  down  to  him  from  his  ancestors,  is  shut  in, 
is  a  contained  and,  hampered  and  hindered  man, 
and  I  will  long  for  the  day  when  he,  lifting  up 
his  eyes,  sees  that  Christ  walking  in  the  midst 
of  humanity,  and  yet  at  the  head  of  humanity, 
mafiifesting  our  human  nature,  but  outgoing  our 
human  nature,  glorifying  our  streets  while  He 
interprets  our  streets  for  the  first  time  into  their 
full  meaning,  giving  to  our  shops  and  houses  a 
radiancy  which  they  have  expected  and  dreamed 
of,  but  never  felt,  and  tempting  us  always  into 
a  deeper  belief  in  Him,  which,  embodying  itself 


THOUGHT  AND  ACTION.  69 

in  a  completer  consecration  to  the  right  and  true, 
shall  lead  us  on  into  the  fulness  which  he  fills. 
Can  I,  can  you,  have  Christ  in  human  history, 
Christ  in  the  world,  and  live  as  if  He  were  not 
here  ?  Will  you  not  give  yourself  to  that  of  Him 
which  you  know  to-day?  Will  you  not  at  least 
lay  hold  of  the  very  skirts  of  His  garment  and 
say,  "  I  see  that  Thou  art  good,  I  see  that  Thou 
art  true.  Lead  me  into  the  goodness  and  truth 
which  by  communion  and  sympathy  shall  know 
Thee  more.  Lord,  I  believe.  I  believe  just  a 
little.  Lord,  I  know  that  that  must  come  which 
Thou  hast  said  has  come  in  Thee.  I  would  enter 
into  Thee,  to  see  whether  it  has  indeed  come  in 
Thee,  and  Thou  shalt  lead  me.  Thou  shalt  teach 
me.  Lord,  I  believe.  I  have  not  grasped  Thee. 
'No  man  has  grasped  Thee.  The  man  who  says 
that  he  has  grasped  Thee  proves  thereby  that  he 
does  not  know  Thee.  I  know  that  I  have  not 
grasped  Thee,  but  I  will  follow  Thee  by  doing 
righteousness,  by  serving  truth,  by  knowing  and 
acknowledging  Thee  until  all  of  that  shall  be- 
come clear  to  me.  I  will  follow  Thee,  and  Thou 
shalt  lead  me  into  the  glory  which  Thou  Thyself 
abidest  in.  Lord,  I  believe.  Lord,  I  believe,  help 
Thou  mine  unbelief."  The  story  of  the  present, 
the  hope,  the  pure,  certain  hope  of  the  future  is 
in  those  great  words:  "Lord,  I  believe,  help 
Thou  mine  unbelief.'' 


THE   DUTY  OF   THE   CHRISTIAN 
BUSINESS   MAN, 


o>«>4o 


I  WILL  read  to  you  once  again  the  words  whicli 
I  have  read  before,  the  words  of  Jesus  in  the 
eighth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  : 

"  As  He  spake  these  words,  many  believed  on 
Him.  Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which 
believed  on  Him,  If  ye  continue  in  My  word, 
then  are  ye  My  disciples  indeed;  and  ye  shall 
know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free.  They  answered  Him,  We  be  Abraham's 
seed,  and  were  never  in  bondage  to  any  man: 
how  say  est  Thou,  Ye  shall  be  made  free?  Jesus 
answered  them.  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you. 
Whosoever  committeth  sin  is  the  serv'ant  of  sin. 
And  the  servant  abideth  not  in  the  house  for 
ever:  but  the  Son  abideth  ever.  If  the  Son 
therefore  shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free 
indeed." 

I  do  not  know  how  any  man  can  stand  and 
plead  with  his  brethren  for  the  higher  life,  that 
71 


72  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

they  will  enter  into  and  make  their  own  the  life 
of  Christ  and  God,  unless  he  is  perpetually  con- 
scious that  around  them  with  whom  he  pleads 
there  is  the  perpetual  pleading  and  the  voice  of 
God  Himself.  Unless  a  man  believes  that,  every- 
thing that  he  has  to  say  must  seem,  in  the  first 
place,  impertinent,  and,  in  the  second  place, 
almost  absolutely  hopeless.  Who  is  man  that 
he  shall  plead  with  his  fellow-man  for  the  change 
of  a  life,  for  the  entrance  into  a  whole  new 
career,  for  the  alteration  of  a  spirit,  for  the  sur- 
rounding of  himself  with  a  new  region  in  which 
he  has  not  lived  before?  But  if  it  be  so,  that 
God  is  pleading  with  every  one  of  His  children 
to  enter  into  the  highest  life;  if  it  be  so,  that 
God  is  making  His  application  and  His  appeal 
to  every  soul  to  know  Him,  and  in  Him  to  know 
himself,  then  one  may  plead  with  earnestness 
and  plead  with  great  hopefulness  before  his 
brethren.  And  so  it  is.  The  great  truth  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  that,  that  God  is  pleading  with 
every  soul,  not  merely  in  the  words  which  we 
hear  from  one  another,  not  merely  in  the  words 
which  we  read  from  His  book,  but  in  every  influ- 
ence of  life;  and,  in  those  unknown  influences 
which  are  too  subtle  for  us  to  understand  or 
perceive,  God  is  forever  seeking  after  the  souls 
of  His  children. 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   73 

I  cannot  stand  before  you  for  the  last  time 
that  I  shall  stand  in  these  meetings,  my  friends, 
without  reminding  myself  and  without  remind- 
ing you  of  that ;  without  reminding  myself  also 
and  without  trying  to  remind  you  of  how  abso- 
lutely conformable  it  is  to  everything  that  man 
does  in  this  world.  The  g^reat  richness  of  nature/ 
the  great^ri(£li]i£sjs.,af  Jife,.>C£^  under- 

stand that  behind  every  specific  action  of  man 
there  is  some  one  of  the  more  elemental  and 
primary  forces  of  the  universe  that  are  always 
trying  to  express  themselves.  There  is  nothing 
that  man  does  that  finds  its  beginning  within 
itself,  but  everything,  every  work  of  every  trade, 
of  every  occupation,  is  simply  the  utterance  of 
some  one  of  those  great  forces  which  lie  behind 
all  life,  and  in  the  various  ways  of  the  different 
generations  and  of  the  different  men  are  always 
trying  to  make  their  mark  upon  the  world. 
Behind  the  power  that  the  man  exercises  there 
always  lies  the  great  power  of  life,  the  continual 
struggle  of  nature  to  write  herself  in  the  life  and 
work  of  man,  the  power  of  beauty  struggling  to 
manifest  itself,  the  harmony  that  is  always 
desiring  to  make  itself  known.  To  the  merchant 
there  are  the  great  laws  of  trade,  of  which  his 
works  are  but  the  immediate  expression.  To 
the  mechanic  there  are  the  continual  forces  of 


74  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

nature,  gravitation  uttering  itself  in  all  its 
majesty,  made  no  less  majestic  because  it  simply 
takes  its  expression  for  the  moment  in  some 
particular  exercise  of  his  art.  To  the  ship  that 
sails  upon  the  sea  there  are  the  everlasting  winds 
that  come  out  of  the  treasuries  of  God  and  fulfil 
his  purpose  in  carrying  his  children  to  their 
destination.  There  is  no  perfection  of  the  uni- 
verse and  of  the  special  life  of  man  in  the  uni- 
verse until  it  comes  to  this.  The  greatest  of  all 
forces  are  ready  without  condescension,  are  ready 
as  the  true  expression  of  their  life,  to  manifest 
themselves  in  the  particular  activities  which  we 
find  everywhere,  and  which  are  going  on  every- 
where. The  little  child  digs  his  well  in  the 
seashore  sand,  and  the  great  Atlantic,  miles  deep, 
miles  wide,  is  stirred  all  through  and  through  to 
fill  it  for  him.  Shall  it  not  be  so  then  here 
to-day,  and  shall  it  not  be  the  truth,  upon  which 
we  let  our  minds  especially  dwell,  and  which  we 
keep  in  our  souls  all  the  time  that  I  am  speaking 
and  you  are  listening,  that  however  He  may  be 
hidden  from  our  sight  God  is  the  ultimate  fact 
and  the  final  purpose  and  power  of  the  universe, 
and  that  everything  that  man  tries  to  do  for  his 
fellow-man  is  but  the  expression  of  that  love  of 
God  which  is  everywhere  struggling  to  utter 
itself  in  blessing,  to  give  itself  away  to  the  soul 
of  every  one  for  whom  He  cares? 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   75 

It  is  in  this  truth  that  I  find  the  real  secret, 
the  deepest  meaning,  of  the  everlasting  dissatis- 
faction of  man  that  is  always  ready  to  be  stirred. 
We  moralize,  we  philosophize  about  the  discon- 
tent of  man.  We  give  little  reasons  for  it;  but 
the  real  reason  of  it  all  is  this,  that  which  every- 
thing lying  behind  it  really  signifies:  that  man 
is  greater  than  his  circumstances,  and  that  God 
is  always  calling  to  him  to  come  up  to  the  ful- 
ness of  his  life.  Dreadful  will  be  the  day  when 
the  world  becomes  contented,  when  one  great 
universal  satisfaction  spreads  itself  over  the 
world.  Sad  will  be  the  day  for  every  man  when 
he  becomes  absolutely  contented  with  the  life 
that  he  is  living,  with  the  thoughts  that  he  is 
thinking,  with  the  deeds  that  he  is  doing,  when 
there  is  not  forever  beating  at  the  doors  of  his 
soul  some  great  desire  to  do  something  larger, 
which  he  knows  that  he  was  meant  and  made  to 
do  because  he  is  the  child  of  God.  And  there 
is  the  real  secret  of  the  man's  struggle  with  his 
sins.  It  is  not  simply  the  hatefulness  of  the 
sin,  as  we  have  said  again  and  again,  but  it  is 
the  dim  perception,  the  deep  suspicion,  the  real 
knowledge  at  the  heart  of  the  man,  that  there  is 
a  richer  and  a  sinless  region  in  which  it  is  really 
meant  for  him  to  dwell.  Man  stands  separated 
from  that  life  of  God,  as  it  were,  by  a  great, 


76  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

thick  wall,  and  every  effort  to  put  away  his  sin, 
to  make  himself  a  nobler  and  a  purer  man,  is 
simply  his  beating  at  the  inside  of  that  door 
which  stands  between  him  and  the  life  of  God, 
which  he  knows  that  he  ought  to  be  living.  It 
is  like  the  prisoner  hidden  in  his  cave,  who  feels 
through  all  the  thick  wall  that  shuts  him  out 
from  it  the  sunlight  and  the  joyous  life  that  is 
outside,  who  knows  that  his  imprisonment  is  not 
his  true  condition,  and  so  with  every'  tool  that 
his  hands  can  grasp  and  with  his  bleeding  hands 
themselves  beats  on  the  stone,  that  he  may  find 
his  way  out.  And  the  glory  and  the  beauty  of 
it  is  that  while  he  is  beating  upon  the  inside  of 
the  wall  there  is  also  a  noble  power  praying 
upon  the  outside  of  that  wall.  The  life  to  which 
he  ought  to  come  is  striving  in  its  turn,  upon  its 
side,  to  break  away  the  hindrance  that  is  keep- 
ing him  from  the  thing  he  ought  to  be,  that  is 
keeping  him  from  the  life  he  ought  to  live. 
God,  with  His  sunshine  and  lightning,  with  the 
great  majestic  manifestations  of  Himself,  and 
with  all  the  peaceful  exhibitions  of  His  life,  is 
forever  trying,  upon  His  side  of  the  wall,  to 
break  away  the  great  barrier  that  separates  the 
sinner's  life  from  Him.  Great  is  the  power, 
great  is  the  courage  of  the  sinner,  when  through- 
the  thickness  of  the  walls  he  feels  that  beating 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN,   77 

life  of  God,  when  he  knows  that  he  is  not  work- 
ing alone,  when  he  is  sure  that  God  is  wanting, 
him  just  as  truly,  far  more  truly,  than  he  wants 
God.  He  bears  himself  to  a  nobler  struggle 
with  his  enemy  and  a  more  determined  effort  to 
break  down  the  resistance  that  stands  between 
him  and  the  higher  life.  Our  figure  is  all  imper- 
fect, as  all  our  figures  are  so  imperfect,  because 
it  seems  to  be  the  man  all  by  himself,  working 
by  himself,  until  he  shall  come  forth  into  the 
life  of  God,  as  if  God  waited  there  to  receive  him 
when  he  came  forth  the  freed  man,  and  as  if  the 
working  of  the  freedom  upon  the  sinner's  side 
had  not  something  also  of  the  purpose  of  God 
within  him.  God  is  not  merely  in  the  sunshine ; 
God  is  in  the  cavern  of  the  man's  sin.  God  is 
with  the  sinner  wherever  he  can  be.  There  is 
no  soul  so  black  in  its  sinfulness,  so  determined 
in  its  defiant  obstinacy,  that  God  has  abandoned 
his  throne  room  at  the  centre  of  the  sinner's  life, 
and  every  movement  is  the  God  movement  and 
every  effort  is  the  God  force,  with  which  man 
tries  to  break  forth  from  his  sin  and  come  forth, 
into  the  full  sunlight  of  a  life  with  God.  Do 
you  not  think  how  full  of  hope  it  is?  Do  you 
not  see  that  when  this  great  conception  of  the 
universe,  which  is  Christ's  conception,  which 
beamed  in  every  look  that  He  shed  upon  the 


78  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

world,  which  was  told  in  every  word  that  He 
spoke  and  which  was  in  every  movement  of  His 
hand  —  do  you  not  see  how,  when  this  great  con- 
ception of  the  universe  takes  possession  of  a  man, 
then  all  his  struggle  with  his  sin  is  changed,  it 
becomes  a  strong  struggle,  a  glorious  struggle. 
He  hears  perpetually  the  voice  of  Christ,  "  Be 
of  good  cheer.  I  have  overcome  the  world. 
You  shall  overcome  it  by  the  same  strength  which 
overcame  with  Me." 

And  then  another  thing.  When  a  man  comes 
forth  into  the  fulness  of  that  life  with  God, 
when  at  last  he  has  entered  God's  service  and 
the  obedience  to  God's  will,  and  the  communion 
with  God's  life,  then  there  comes  this  wonder- 
ful thing,  there  comes  the  revelation  of  the  man's 
past.  We  dare  to  tell  the  man  that  if  he  enters 
into  the  divine  life,  if  he  makes  himself  a  ser- 
vant of  God  and  does  God's  will  out  of  obedient 
love,  he  shall  then  be  strong  and  wise.  One 
great  element  of  his  strength  is  going  to  be  this : 
A  marvellous  revelation  that  is  to  come  to  him 
of  how  all  his  past  has  been  filled  with  the  power 
of  that  spirit  with  which  he  has  at  last  entered 
into  communion,  to  which  he  has  at  last  sub- 
mitted himself.  Man  becomes  the  child  of  God, 
becomes  the  servant  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  this 
marvellous  revelation  amazes  him.    He  sees  that 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   79 

back  through  all  the  years  of  his  most  obstinate 
and  careless  life,  through  all  his  wilfulness  and 
resistance,  through  all  his  profligacy  and  black 
sin,  God  has  been  with  him  all  the  time,  beat- 
ing himself  upon  his  life,  showing  him  how  He 
desired  to  call  him  to  Himself,  and  that  the 
final  submission  does  not  win  God.  It  simply 
submits  to  the  God  who  has  been  with  the  soul 
all  the  time.  Can  there  be  anything  more  win- 
ning to  the  soul  than  that,  anything  that  brings 
a  deeper  shame  to  you,  than  to  have  it  revealed 
to  you,  suddenly  or  slowly,  that  from  the  first 
day  that  you  came  into  this  world,  nay,  before 
your  life  was  an  uttered  fact  in  this  world,  God 
has  been  loving  you,  and  seeking  you,  and  plan- 
ning for  you,  and  making  every  effort  that  He 
could  make  in  consistency  with  the  free  will 
with  which  He  endowed  you  from  the  centre  of 
His  own  life,  that  you  might  become  His  and 
therefore  might  become  truly  youself  ?  Through 
all  the  years  in  which  you  were  obstinate  and 
rebellious,  through  all  the  years  in  which  you 
defied  Him,  nay,  through  the  years  in  which  you 
denied  Him  and  said  that  He  did  not  exist,  He 
was  with  you  all  the  time.  What  shall  I  say  to 
my  i>iend  who  is  an  atheist?  Shall  I  believe 
that  until  he  comes  to  a  change  of  his  opinions 
and  recognizes  that  there  is  indeed  a  ruling  love, 


80  PERFECT  FBEEDOM. 

a  great  and  fatherly  God  for  all  the  world,  that  he 
has  nothing  to  do  with  that  God?  Shall  I  believe 
that  God  has  nothing  to  do  with  him  until  he 
acknowledges  God?  God  would  be  no  God  to 
me  if  He  were  that,  if  He  left  the  man  absolutely 
unhelped  until  the  man  beat  at  the  doors  of  His 
divine  helpfulness  and  said,  "  I  believe  in  Thee 
at  last.  Now  help  me."  And  to  the  atheist  there 
appears  the  light  of  the  God  whom  he  denies. 
Into  every  soul,  just  so  far  and  just  so  fast  as  it 
is  possible  for  that  soul  to  receive  it,  God  beats 
His  life  and  gives  His  help.  That  is  what  makes 
a  man  hopeful  of  all  his  fellow-men  as  he  looks 
around  upon  them  and  sees  them  in  all  the  con- 
ditions of  their  life. 

And  this  could  only  be  if  that  were  true,  if 
that  is  true,  which  we  are  dwelling  upon  con- 
stantly, the  absolute  naturalness  of  the  Christian 
life,  that  it  is  man's  true  life,  that  it  is  no  foreign 
region  into  which  some  man  may  be  transported 
and  where  he  lives  an  alien  to  all  his  own  essen- 
tial nature  and  to  all  the  natural  habitudes  in 
which  he  is  intending  to  exist.  There  are  two 
ideas  of  religion  which  always  have  abounded, 
and  our  great  hope  is,  our  great  assurance  for 
the  future  of  the  world  is,  that  the  true  andlpure 
idea  of  religion  some  day  shall  grow  and  take 
possession  of  the  life  of  man.     One  idea,  held 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN,   81 

by  very  earnest  people,  embodied  in  very  faith- 
ful and  devoted  lives,  is  the  strangeness  of  re- 
ligion to  the  life  of  man,  as  if  some  morning 
something  dropped  out  of  the  sky  that  had  had 
no  place  upon  our  earth  before,  as  if  there  came 
the  summons  to  man  to  be  something  entirely 
different  from  what  the  conditions  of  his  nature 
prophesied  and  intended  that  he  should  be. 
The  other  idea  is  that  religion  comes  by  the 
utterance  of  God  from  the  heavens,  but  comes 
up  out  of  the  human  life  of  man ;  that  man  is 
essentially  and  intrinsically  religious;  that  he 
does  not  become  something  else  than  man  when 
he  becomes  the  servant  of  Jesus  Christ,  but  then 
for  the  first  time  he  becomes  man ;  that  religion 
is  not  something  tnat  is*  fastened  upon  the  out- 
side of  his  life,  but  is  the  awakening  of  the  truth 
inside  of  his  life;  the  Church  is  but  the  true 
fulfilment  of  human  life  and  society ;  heaven  is 
but  the  New  Jerusalem  that  completes  all  the 
old  Jerusalems  and  Londons  and  Bostons  that 
have  been  here  upon  our  earth.  Man,  in  the 
fulfilment  of  his  nature  by  Jesus  Christ,  is  man 
—  not  to  be  something  else,  our  whole  humanity 
is  too  dear  to  us.  I  will  cling  to  this  humanity 
of  man,  for  I  do  love  it,  and  I  will  know  nothing 
else.  But  when  man  is  bidden  to  look  back  into 
his  humanity  and  see  what  it  means  to  be  a  man, 


82  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

that  humanity  means  purity,  truthfulness,  ear- 
nestness, and  faithfulness  to  that  God  of  which 
humanity  is  a  part,  that  God  which  manifested 
that  humanity  was  a  part  of  it,  when  the  incar- 
nation showed  how  close  the  divine  and  human 
belonged  together  —  when  man  hears  that  voice, 
I  do  not  know  how  he  can  resist,  why  he  shall 
not  lift  liimself  up  and  say,  "Now  I  can  be  a 
man,  and  I  can  be  man  only  as  I  share  in  and 
give  my  obedience  to  and  enter  into  communion 
with  the  life  of  God,"  and  say  to  Christ,  to  Christ 
the  revealer  of  all  this,  "  Here  I  am,  fulfil  my 
manhood." 

And  do  not  you   see  how  immediately  this 
sweeps  aside,  as  one  guf  h  of  the  sunlight  sweeps 
aside  the  darkness,  do  not  you  see  how  it  sweeps 
aside  all  the  foolish  and  little  things  that  people  / 
are  saying?    I  say  to  my  friend,  "Be  a  Chris-/ 
tian."     That  means  to  be  a  full  man.     And  he  I 
says  to  me,  "  I  have  not  time  to  be  a  Christian./ 
I  have  not  room.     If  my  life  was  not  so  fulli 
You  don't  know  how  hard  I  work  from  morning 
to  night.     What  time  is  there  for  tne  to  be  a 
Christian?     What  time  is  there,  what  room  is 
there  for  Christianity  in  such  a  life  as  mine?" 
But  does  not  it  come  to  seem  to  us  so  strange,  so 
absurd,  if  it  was  not  so  melancholy,  that  man 
should  say  such  a  thing  as  that?    It  is  as  if  the 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   83 

engine  had  said  it  had  no  room  for  the  steam. 
It  is  as  if  the  tree  had  said  it  had  no  room  for  the 
sap.  It  is  as  if  the  ocean  had  said  it  had  no  room 
for  the  tide.  It  is  as  if  the  man  said  that  he  had 
no  room  for  his  soul.  It  is  as  if  life  said  that  it 
had  no  time  to  live,  when  it  is  life.  It  is  not 
something  that  is  added  to  life.  It  is  life.  A 
man  is  not  living  without  it.  And'for  a  man  to 
say  that  "  I  am  so  full  in  life  that  I  have  no  room 
for  life, "  you  see  immediately  to  what  absurdity 
it  reduces  itself.  And  how  a  man  knows  what 
he  is  called  upon  by  God's  voice,  speaking  to 
him  every  hour,  speaking  to  him  every  moment, 
speaking  to  him  out  of  everything,  that  which 
the  man  is  called  upon  to  do  because  it  is  the 
man's  only  life!  Therefore  time,  room,  that  is 
what  time,  that  is  what  room  is  for  —  life.  Life 
is  the  thing  we  seek,  and  man  finds  it  in  the  ful- 
filment of  his  life  by  Jesus  Christ. 

Now,  until  we  understand  this  and  take  it  in 
its  richness,  all  religion  seems,  becomes  to  us 
such  a  little  thing  that  it  is  not  religion  at  all. 
You  have  got  to  know  that  religion,  the  service 
of  Christ,  is  not  something  to  be  taken  in  in  ad- 
dition to  your  life;  it  is  your  life.  It  is  not  a 
ribbon  that  you  shall  tie  in  your  hat,  and  go  down 
the  street  declaring  yourself  that  you  have  ac- 
cepted something  in  addition  to  the  life  which 


84  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

your  fellow-men  are  living.  It  is  something 
which,  taken  into  your  heart,  shall  glow  in  every 
action  so  that  your  fellow-men  shall  say,  ^^Lo, 
how  he  lives!  What  new  life  has  come  into 
him?''  It  is  that  insistence  upon  the  great 
essentialness  of  the  religious  life,  it  is  the  insist- 
ence that  religion  is  not  a  lot  of  things  that  a 
man  does,  but  is  a  new  life  that  a  man  lives, 
uttering  itself  in  new  actions  because  it  is  the 
new  life.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  again  he  can- 
not see  the  kingdom  of  God.''  So  Jesus  said  to 
Nicodemus  the  ruler,  Nicodemus  the  amateur  in 
religions,  who  came  and  said,  "Perhaps  this 
teacher  has  something  else  that  I  can  bind  into 
my  catalogue  of  truths  and  hold  it."  Jesus 
looked  him  in  the  face  and  said :  "  It  is  not  that, 
my  friend,  it  is  not  that ;  it  is  to  be  a  new  man, 
it  is  to  be  born  again.  It  is  to  have  the  new 
life,  which  is  the  old  life,  which  is  the  eternal 
life.  So  alone  does  man  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  God."  I  cannot  help  believing  all  the 
time  that  if  our  young  men  knew  this,  religion 
would  lift  itself  up  and  have  a  dignity  and  great- 
ness —  not  a  thing  for  weak  souls,  but  a  thing 
for  the  manliest  soul.  Just  because  of  its  man- 
liness it  is  easy.  "  Is  it  easy  or  is  it  hard,  this 
religion  of  yours?  "  people  say  to  us.  I  am  sure 
I  do  not  know  the  easy  and  the  hard  things.     I 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   85 

cannot  tell  the  difference.  What  is  easier  than 
for  a  man  to  breathe?  And  yet,  have  you  never 
seen  a  breathless  man,  a  man  in  whom  the  breath- 
ing was  almost  stopped,  a  drowning  man,  an 
exhausted  man?  have  you  never  seen,  when  the 
breath  was  put  once  more  to  his  nostrils  and 
brought  down  once  more  into  his  empty  lungs, 
the  struggle  with  which  he  came  back  to  it?  It 
was  the  hardest  thing  for  him  to  do,  so  much 
harder  for  him  to  live  than  it  was  for  him  to  die. 
But  by  and  by  see  him  on  his  feet,  going  about 
his  work,  helping  his  fellow-men,  living  hi-s  life, 
rejoicing  in  his  days,  guarding  against  his  dan- 
gers, full  of  life.  Is  life  a  hard  thing  for  him? 
You  don't  talk  about  its  being  hard  or  easy  any 
more  than  you  talk  about  life  itself.  The  man 
who  lives  in  God  knows  no  life  except  the  life 
of  God.  Let  men  know  that  it  is  not  mere 
trifling,  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  dallied  with  for 
an  instant,  it  is  not  a  thing  for  a  man  to  con- 
vince himself  by  an  argument,  and  then  keep  as 
it  were  locked  in  a  shelf :  it  is  something  that  is 
so  deep  and  serious,  so  deep  and  serious  that 
when  a  man  has  once  tested  it  there  is  no  more 
chance  of  his  going  out  of  it  than  there  is  of  his 
going  out  of  the  friendship  and  the  love  which 
holds  him  with  its  perpetual  expression,  with 
the  continued  deeper  and  deeper  manifestation 


86  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

of  the  way  in  which  the  living  being  belongs  to 
him  who  has  a  right  to  his  life. 

Now  in  the  few  moments  that  remain  I  want 
to  take  it  for  granted  most  seriously,  most  ear- 
nestly, that  the  men  who  are  listening  to  me  are 
in  earnest,  and  I  want  to  try  to  tell  them  as  a 
brother  might  tell  a  brother,  as  I  might  tell  to 
you  or  try  to  tell  to  you  if  sitting  before  my  fire- 
side, I  want  to  try  to  answer  the  question  which 
I  know  is  upon  your  hearts.  "What  shall  I  do 
about  this?"  I  know  you  say.  "Is  this  all  in 
the  clouds?  Is  there  anything  I  can  do  in  the 
right  way?"  If  you  are  in  earnest,  I  shall  try 
to  tell  you  what  I  should  do,  if  I  were  in  your 
place,  that  I  might  enter  into  that  life  and  be 
the  free  man  that  we  have  tried  to  describe,  of 
whom  we  believe  certain  special  and  definite 
things.  What  are  they?  In  the  first  place  I 
would  put  away  my  sin.  There  is  not  a  man 
listening  to  me  now  who  has  not  some  trick  of 
life,  some  habit  that  has  possession  of  him,  which 
he  knows  is  a  wrong  thing.  The  very  first  thing 
for  a  man  to  do  is  absolutely  to  set  himself 
against  them.  If  you  are  foul,  stop  being  licen- 
tious, at  least  stop  doing  licentious  things.  If 
you,  in  any  part  of  your  business,  are  tricky, 
and  unsound,  and  unjust,  cut  that  off,  no  matter 
what  it  costs  you.     There  is  something  clear  and 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN,   87 

definite  enough  for  every  man.  It  is  as  clear  for 
every  man  as  the  sunlight  that  smites  him  in  his 
eyes.  Stop  doing  the  bad  thing  which  you  are 
doing.  It  is  drawing  the  bolt  away  to  let  what- 
ever mercy  may  come  in  come  in.  Stop  doing 
your  sin.  You  can  do  that  if  you  will.  Stop 
doing  your  sin,  no  matter  how  mechanical  it 
seems,  and  then  take  up  your  duty,  whatever 
you  can  do  to  make  the  world  more  bright  and 
good.  Do  whatever  you  can  to  help  every  strug- 
gling soul,  to  add  new  strength  to  any  staggering 
cause,  the  poor  sick  man  that  is  by  you,  the  poor 
wronged  man  whom  you  with  your  influence 
might  vindicate,  the  poor  boy  in  your  shop  that 
you  may  set  with  new  hope  upon  the  road  of  life 
that  is  beginning  already  to  look  dark  to  him. 
I  cannot  tell  you  what  it  is.  But  you  know  your 
duty.  No  man  ever  looked  for  it  and  did  not 
find  it. 

And  then  the  third  thing  —  pray.  Yes,  go  to 
the  God  whom  you  but  dimly  see  and  pray  to 
Him  in  the  darkness,  where  He  seems  to  sit. 
Ask  Him,  as  if  He  were,  that  He  will  give  you 
that  which,  if  He  is,  must  come  from  Him,  can 
come  from  Him  alone.  Pray  anxiously.  Pray 
passionately,  in  the  simplest  of  all  words,  with 
the  simplest  of  all  thoughts.  Pray,  the  manli- 
est thing  that  a  man  can  do,  the  fastening  of  his 


88  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

life  to  tlie  eternal,  the  drinking  of  his  thirsty- 
soul  out  of  the  great  fountain  of  life.  And  pray- 
distinctly.  Pray-  upon  your  knees.  One  grows 
tired  sometimes  of  the  free  thought,  which  is  yet 
perfectly  true,  that  a  man  can  pray  anywhere 
and  anyhow.  But  men  have  found  it  good  to 
make  the  whole  system  pray.  Kneel  down,  and 
the  very  bending  of  these  obstinate  and  unused 
knees  of  yours  will  make  the^soul  kneel  down  in 
the  humility  in  which  it  can  be  exalted  in  the 
sight  of  God. 

And  then  read  your  Bible.  How  cold  that 
sounds!  What,  read  a  book  to  save  my  soul? 
Kead  an  old  story  that  my  life  in  these  new  days 
shall  be  regenerated  and  saved?  Yes,  do  just 
that,  for  out  of  that  book,  if  you  read  it  truly, 
shall  come  the  divine  and  human  person.  If 
you  can  read  it  with  your  soul  as  well  as  with 
your  eyes,  there  shall  come  the  Christ  there  walk- 
ing in  Palestine.  You  shall  see  Him  so  much 
greater  than  the  Palestine  in  which  he  walks, 
that  at  one  word  of  prayer,  as  you  bend  over  the 
illuminated  page,  there  shall  lift  up  that  body- 
being  of  the  Christ,  and  come  down  through  the 
centuries  and  be  your  helper  at  your  side.  So 
read  your  Bible. 

And  then  seek  the  Church  —  oh,  yes,  the 
Church.     Do  you  think,  my  friends,  you  who 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   89 

stand  outside  the  Church,  and  blame  her  for  her 
inconsistencies,  and  tell  of  her  shortcomings,  and 
point  out  the  corruptions  that  are  in  her  history, 
all  that  are  in  her  present  life  to-day  —  do  you 
really  believe  that  there  is  an  earnest  man  in  the 
Church  that  does  not  know  the  Church's  weak- 
nesses and  faults  just  as  well  as  you  do?  Do  you 
believe  that  there  is  one  of  us  living  in  the  life 
and  heart  of  the  Church  who  don't  think  with  all 
his  conscience,  who  don't  in  every  day  in  deep 
distress  and  sorrow  know  how  the  Church  fails  of 
the  great  life  of  the  Master,  how  far  she  is  from 
being  what  God  meant  she  should  be,  what  she 
shall  be  some  day?  But  all  the  more  I  will  put 
my  life  into  that  Church,  all  the  more  I  will 
drink  the  strength  that  she  can  give  to  me  and 
make  what  humble  contribution  to  her  I  can 
bring  of  the  earnestness  and  faithfulness  of  my 
life.  Come  into  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 
There  is  no  other  body  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
that  represents  what  she  represents  —  the  noble 
destiny  of  the  human  soul,  the  great  capacity  of 
human  faith,  the  inexhaustible  and  unutterable 
love  of  God,  the  Christ,  who  stands  to  manifest 
them  all. 

Kow  those  are  the  things  for  a  man  to  do  who 
really  cares  about  all  this.  Those  are  the  things 
for  an  earnest  man  to  do.     They  have  no  power 


90  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

in  themselves,  but  they  are  the  opening  of  the 
windows.  And  if  that  which  I  believe  is  true, 
God  is  everywhere  giving  himself  to  us,  the 
opening  of  the  windows  is  a  signal  that  we  want 
Him  and  an  invitation  that  He  will  be  glad 
enough  to  answer,  to  come.  Into  every  window 
that  is  open  to  Him  and  turned  His  way,  Christ 
comes,  God  comes.  That  is  the  only  story. 
There  is  put  aside  everything  else.  Election, 
predestination,  they  can  go  where  they  please. 
I  am  sure  that  God  gives  Himself  to  every  soul 
that  wants  Him  and  declares  its  want  by  the 
open  readiness  of  the  signal  which  He  knows. 
How  did  the  sun  rise  on  our  city  this  morning? 
Starting  up  in  the  east,  the  sun  came  in  its 
majesty  into  the  sky.  It  smote  on  the  eastward 
windows,  and  wherever  the  window  was  all 
closed,  even  if  it  were  turned  eastward,  on  the 
sacred  side  of  the  city's  life,  it  could  not  come 
in ;  but  wherever  any  eastward  window  had  its 
curtains  drawn,  wherever  he  who  slept  had  left 
the  blinds  shut,  so  that  the  sun  when  it  came 
might  find  its  way  into  his  sleepiness,  there  the 
sun  came,  and  with  a  shout  awoke  its  faithful 
servant  who  had  believed  in  him  even  before  he 
had  seen  him,  and  said,  "Arise,  arise  from  the 
dead,  and  I  will  give  thee  life."  This  is  the 
simplicity  of  it  all,  my  friends.     A  multitude  of 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.    91 

other  things  you  need  not  trouble  yourselves 
about.  I  amaze  myself  when  I  think  how  men 
go  asking  about  the  questions  of  eternal  punish- 
ment and  the  duration  of  man's  torment  in 
another  life,  of  what  will  happen  to  any  man 
who  does  not  obey  Jesus  Christ.  Oh,  my 
friends,  the  soul  is  all  wrong  when  it  asks  that. 
Not  until  the  soul  says,  "  What  will  come  if  I  do 
obey  Jesus  Christ? '^  and  opens  its  glorified 
vision  to  see  all  the  great  things  that  are  given  to 
the  soul  that  enters  into  the  service  of  the  perfect 
one,  the  perfect  love,  not  until  then  the  perfect 
love,  the  perfect  life,  come  in.  A  man  may  be 
—  I  believe  it  with  all  my  heart  —  so  absolutely 
wrapped  up  in  the  glory  of  obedience,  and  the 
higher  life,  and  the  service  of  Christ,  that  he 
never  once  asks  himself,  "  What  will  come  to  me 
if  I  do  not  obey?  "  any  more  than  your  child  asks 
you  what  you  will  do  to  him  if  he  is  not  obedi- 
ent. Every  impulse  and  desire  of  his  life  sets 
toward  obedience.  And  so  the  soul  may  have 
no  theory  of  everlasting  or  of  limited  punish- 
ment, or  of  the  other  life. 

Simply  now,  here,  he  must  have  that  without 
which  he  cannot  live,  that  without  which  there 
is  no  life.  Jesus  the  soul  must  have,  the  one 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever;  He  that  is  and 
was  and  is  to  be.    Men  dwell  upon  what  He  was, 


92  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

upon  what  He  is ;  I  rather  think  to-day  of  what 
He  is  to  be.  And  when  I  see  these  young  men 
here  before  me  looking  to  the  future  and  not  to 
the  past, — nay,  looking  to  the  future  and  not  to 
the  present,  valuing  the  present  only  as  it  is  the 
seed  ground  of  the  future,  the  foundation  upon 
which  the  structure  is  to  rise  whose  pinnacle 
shall  some  day  pierce  the  sky, —  I  want  to  tell 
them  of  the  Jesus  that  shall  be.  In  fuller  com- 
prehension of  Him,  with  deeper  understanding 
of  His  life,  with  a  more  entire  impression  of 
what  He  is  and  of  what  He  may  be  to  the  soul, 
so  men  shall  understand  Him  in  the  days  to  be, 
and  yet  He  shall  be  the  same  Christ  still.  The 
future  belongs  to  Jesus  Christ,  yes,  the  same 
Christ  that  I  believe  in  and  that  I  call  upon  you 
to  believe  in  to-day,  but  a  larger,  fuller,  more 
completely  comprehended  Christ,  the  Christ  that 
is  to  be,  the  same  Christ  that  was  and  suffered, 
the  same  Christ  that  is  and  helps,  but  the  same 
Christ  also  who,  being  forever  deeper  and  deeper 
and  more  deeply  received  into  the  souls  of  men, 
regenerates  their  institutions,  changes  their  life, 
opens  their  capacities,  surprises  them  with  them- 
selves, makes  the  world  glorious  and  joyous 
every  day,  because  it  has  become  the  new  incar- 
nation, the  new  presence  of  the  divine  life  in 
the  life  of  man. 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   93 

Men  are  talking  about  the  institutions  in  -which 
you  are  engaged,  my  friends,  about  the  business 
from  which  you  have  come  here  to  worship  for 
this  little  hour.  Men  are  questioning  about 
what  they  care  to  do,  what  they  can  have  to  do 
with  Christianity.  They  are  asking  everywhere 
this  question :  "  Is  it  possible  for  a  man  to  be 
engaged  in  the  activities  of  our  modern  life  and 
yet  to  be  a  Christian?  Is  it  possible  for  a  man 
to  be  a  broker,  a  shopkeeper,  a  lawyer,  a  me- 
chanic, is  it  possible  for  a  man  to  be  engaged  in 
a  business  of  to-day,  and  yet  love  his  God  and 
his  fellow-man  as  himself?"  I  do  not  know,  I 
do  not  know  what  transformations  these  dear 
businesses  of  yours  have  got  to  undergo  before 
they  shall  be  true  and  ideal  homes  for  the  child 
of  God ;  but  I  do  know  that  upon  Christian  mer- 
chants and  Christian  brokers  and  Christian  law- 
yers and  Christian  men  in  business  to-day  there 
rests  an  awful  and  a  beautiful  responsibility :  to 
prove,  if  you  can  prove  it,  that  these  things  are 
capable  of  being  made  divine,  to  prove  that  a 
man  can  do  the  work  that  you  have  been  doing 
this  morning  and  will  do  this  afternoon,  and  yet 
shall  love  his  God  and  his  fellow-man  as  himself. 
If  he  cannot,  if  he  cannot,  what  business  ^ have 
you  to  be  doing  them?  If  he  can,  what  business 
have  you  to  be  doing  them  so  poorly,  so  carnally, 


94  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

SO  Tinspiritually,  that  men  look  on  them  and 
shake  their  heads  with  doubt?  It  belongs  to 
Christ  in  men  first  to  prove  that  man  may  be  a 
Christian  and  yet  do  business ;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  to  show  how  a  man,  as  he  becomes  a 
greater  Christian,  shall  purify  and  lift  the  busi- 
ness that  he  does  and  make  it  the  worthy  occu- 
pation of  the  Son  of  God. 

What  shall  be  our  universal  law  of  life?  Can 
we  give  it  as  we  draw  toward  our  last  moment? 
I  think  we  can.  I  want  to  live,  I  want  to  live, 
if  God  will  give  me  help,  such  a  life  that,  if  all 
men  in  the  world  were  living  it,  this  world 
would  be  regenerated  and  saved.  I  want  to  live 
such  a  life  that,  if  that  life  changed  into  new 
personal  peculiarities  as  it  went  to  different 
men,  but  the  same  life  still,  if  every  man  were 
living  it,  the  millennium  would  be  here;  nay, 
heaven  would  be  here,  the  universal  presence  of 
God.  Are  you  living  that  life  now?  Do  you 
want  your  life  multiplied  by  the  thousand  mill- 
ion so  that  all  men  shall  be  like  you,  or  don't 
you  shudder  at  the  thought,  don't  you  give  hope 
that  other  men  are  better  than  you  are?  Keep 
that  fear,  but  only  that  it  may  be  the  food  of  a 
diviner  hope,  that  all  the  world  may  see  in  you 
the  thing  that  man  was  meant  to  be,  that  is,  the 
Christ.     Ah,  you  say,  that  great  world,  it  is  too 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   95 

big ;  how  can  I  stretch  my  thought  and  imagina- 
tion and  conscience  to  the  poor  creatures  in 
Africa  and  everywhere?  Then  bring  it  home. 
Ah,  this  dear  city  of  ours^  this  city  that  we 
love,  this  city  in  which  many  of  us  were  born, 
in  which  all  of  us  are  finding  the  rich  and  sweet 
associations  of  our  life,  this  city  whose  very 
streets  we  love  because  they  come  so  close  to 
everything  we  do  and  are,  cannot  we  do  some- 
thing for  it?  Cannot  we  make  its  life  diviner? 
Cannot  we  contribute  something  that  it  has  not 
to-day?  Cannot  you  put  in  it,  some  little  corner 
of  it,  a  life  which  others  shall  see  and  say,  "Ah, 
that  our  lives  may  be  like  that !  "  And  then  the 
good  Boston  in  which  we  so  rejoice,  which  we 
so  love,  which  we  would  so  fain  make  a  part  of 
the  kingdom  of  God,  a  true  city  of  Jesus  Christ, 
we  shall  not  die  without  having  done  something 
for  it. 

I  linger,  and  yet  I  must  not  linger.  Oh,  my 
friends,  oh,  my  fellow-men,  it  is  not  very  long 
that  we  shall  be  here.  It  is  not  very  long.  This 
life  for  which  we  are  so  careful  —  it  is  not  very 
long;  and  yet  it  is  so  long,  because,  long,  long 
after  we  have  passed  away  out  of  men's  sight  and 
out  of  men's  memory,  the  world,  with  something 
that  we  have  left  upon  it,  that  we  have  left  within 
it,  will  be  going  on  still.  *  It  is  so  long  because, 


96  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

long  after  the  city  and  the  world  have  passed 
away,  we  shall  go  on  somewhere,  somehow,  the 
same  beings  still,  carrying  into  the  depths  of 
eternity  something  that  this  world  has  done  for  us 
that  no  other  world  could  do,  something  of  good- 
ness to  get  now  that  will  be  of  value  to  us  a  mill- 
ion years  hence,  that  we  never  could  get  unless 
we  got  it  in  the  short  years  of  this  earthly  life. 
Will  you  know  it?  Will  you  let  Christ  teach  it 
to  you?  Will  you  let  Christ  tell  you  what  is  the 
perfect  man?  Will  you  let  Him  set  His  sim- 
plicity and  graciousness  close  to  your  life,  and 
will  you  feel  their  power?  Oh!  be  brave,  be 
true,  be  pure,  be  men,  be  men  in  the  power  of 
Jesus  Christ.  May  God  bless  you!  May  God 
bless  you !     Let  us  pray. 


TRUE    LIBERTY. 


o><Ko 


An  earnest  appeal  to  all  that  enter  that  Lib- 
erty. May  I  read  to  you  a  few  words  from  the 
eighth  chapter  of  St.  John?  "  Then  said  Jesus 
to  those  Jews  which  believed  on  Him,  If  ye 
continue  in  my  word,  then  are  ye  my  disciples 
indeed;  and  ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  shall  make  you  free." 

Let  us  not  think,  my  friends,  that  there  is 
anything  strange  about  the  spectacle  which  we 
witnessed  this  morning.  The  only  strange  thing 
that  there  could  be  about  it  is  that  anybody 
should  think  that  it  is  strange  that  men  should 
turn  aside  for  half  an  hour  from  their  ordinary 
business  pursuits,  that  they  should  come  from 
the  details  of  life  to  inquire  in  regard  to  the 
principles,  the  everlasting  principles  and  pur- 
poses of  life ;  that  they  should  turn  aside  from 
those  things  which  are  occupying  them  from  day 
to  day  and  make  one  single  hour  in  the  week 
consecrated  to  the  service  of  those  great  things 
97 


98  PERFECT  FBEEBOM. 

which  underlie  all  life  —  surely  there  is  nothing 
very  strange.  There  is  nothing  more  absolutely 
natural.  Every  man  does  it  in  his  own  sort  of 
way,  in  his  own  choice  of  time.  We  have  chosen 
to  do  it  together,  on  one  day  of  the  week  during 
these  few  weeks  which  the  Christian  Church  has 
so  largely  set  apart  for  special  thought  and  prayer 
and  earnest  attempt  to  approach  the  God  to  whom 
we  belong.  It  is  simply  as  if  the  stream  turned 
back  again  to  its  fountain,  that  it  might  refresh 
itself  and  make  itself  strong  for  the  great  work 
that  it  had  to  do  in  watering  the  fields  and  turn- 
ing the  wheels  of  industry.  It  is  simply  as  if 
men  plodding  along  over  the  flat  routine  of  their 
life  chose  once  in  a  while  to  go  up  into  the  moun- 
tain top,  whence  they  might  once  in  a  while  look 
abroad  over  their  life,  and  understand  more  fully 
the  way  in  which  they  ought  to  work.  These 
are  the  principles,  these  are  the  pictures  which 
represent  that  which  we  have  in  mind  as  we 
come  together  for  a  little  while  each  Monday  in 
these  few  weeks,  in  order  that  we  may  think 
about  things  of  God  and  try  to  realize  the  depth 
of  our  own  human  life.  The  first  thing  that  we 
ought  to  understand  about  it  is  that  when  we 
turn  aside  from  life  it  is  only  that  we  go  deeper 
into  life.  This  hour  does  not  stand  apart  from 
the  rest  of  the  hours  of  the  week,  in  that  we  are 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  99 

dealing  with  things  in  which  the  rest  of  the  week 
has  no  concern.  He  who  understands  life  deeply 
and  fully,  understands  life  truly ;  he  has  forever 
renewed  his  lifej  and  if  there  comes  into  our 
hearts,  in  the  life  which  we  are  living,  a  perpet- 
ual sense  that  life  needs  renewal,  a  richening  and 
refreshing,  then  it  is  in  order  that  we  may  go 
down  into  the  depths  and  see  what  lies  at  the 
root  of  things  —  things  that  we  are  perpetually 
doing  and  thinking.  It  is  this  that  brought  us 
together  here:  it  is  that  we  may  open  to  our- 
selves some  newer,  higher  life.  It  is  that  we 
may  understand  the  life  that  we  may  live,  along 
side  of  and  as  a  richer  development  of  that  life 
which  we  are  living  from  day  to  day,  which  we 
have  been  living  during  the  years  of  our  life. 
How  that  idea  has  haunted  men  in  every  period 
of  their  existence,  how  is  it  haunting  you,  that 
there  is  some  higher  life  which  it  is  possible  to 
live !  There  has  never  been  a  religion  that  has 
not  started  there,  lifted  up  its  eyes  and  seen,  afar 
off,  what  it  was  possible  for  man  to  do  from  day 
to  day,  in  contrast  with  the  things  which  men 
immediately  and  presently  are.  There  is  not 
any  moment  of  the  human  soul  which  has  not 
rested  upon  some  great  conception  that  man  was 
a  nobler  being  than  he  was  ordinarily  conceiving 
himself  to  be;  that  he  was  not  destined  to  the 


100  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

things  which  were  ordinarily  occupying  his  life ; 
that  he  might  be  living  a  greater  and  nobler  life. 
It  is  because  the  Christian  Scriptures  have  laid 
most  earnestly  hold  of  this  idea,  it  is  because  it 
was  represented  not  simply  in  the  words  which 
Christ  said,  but  in  the  very  being  which  Christ 
was,  that  we  go  to  them  to  get  the  inspiration 
and  the  indication,  the  revelation  and  the  enlight- 
enment which  we  need.  I  have  read  to  you  these 
few  words  in  which  Christ  declares  the  whole 
subject,  the  whole  character  of  which  His  life  is 
and  what  His  work  is  about  to  do,  because  it 
seems  to  me  that  they  strike  at  once  the  key-note 
of  that  which  we  want  to  understand.  They  let 
us  enter  into  the  full  conception  of  that  which 
the  new  life  which  is  offered  to  man  really  is. 
There  are  two  conceptions  which  come  to  every 
man  when  he  is  entering  upon  a  new  life,  chang- 
ing his  present  life  to  something  that  is  different 
from  the  present  life,  and  being  a  different  sort  of 
creature  and  living  in  a  different  sort  of  a  way. 
The  first  way  in  which  it  presents  itself  to  him 
—  almost  always  at  the  beginning  of  every  re- 
ligion, perhaps  —  is  in  the  way  of  restraint  and 
imprisonment.  Man  thinks  of  every  change  that 
is  to  come  to  him  as  in  the  nature  of  denial  of 
something  that  he  is  at  the  present  doing  and 
being,  as  the  laying  hold  upon  himself  of  some 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  101 

sort  of  restraint,  bringing  to  him  something 
which  says :  "  I  must  not  do  the  thing  which  I 
am  doing.  I  must  lay  upon  myself  restraints, 
restrictions,  commandments,  and  prohibitions. 
I  must  not  let  myself  be  the  man  that  I  am." 
You  see  how  the  Old  Testament  comes  before 
the  New  Testament,  the  law  ringing  from  the 
mountain  top  with  the  great  denials,  the  great 
prohibitions,  that  come  from  the  mouth  of  God. 
"  Thou  shalt  not  do  this,  that,  or  the  other  — 
Thou  shalt  not  murder.  Thou  shalt  not  steal. 
Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery.  Thou  shalt  not 
covet  thy  neighbor's  goods."  That  is  the  first 
conception  which  comes  to  a  man  of  the  way  in 
which  he  is  to  enter  upon  a  new  life,  of  the  way 
in  which  the  denial  in  his  experience  is  to  take 
effect.  It  is  as  if  the  hands  were  stretched  out 
in  order  that  fetters  might  be  placed  upon  them. 
The  man  says,  "  Let  some  power  come  that  is  to 
hinder  me  from  being  this  thing  that  I  am." 
And  the  whole  notion  is  the  notion  of  imprison- 
ment, restraint.  So  it  is  with  all  civilization. 
It  is  perfectly  possible  for  us  to  represent  civil- 
ization as  compared  with  barbarism,  as  accepted 
by  mankind,  as  a  great  mass  of  restrictions  and 
prohibitions  that  have  been  laid  upon  human 
life,  so  that  the  freedom  of  life  has  been  cast 
aside,  and  man  has  entered  into  restricted,  re- 


102  PEEFECT  FREEDOM, 

strained,  and  imprisoned  condition.  So  it  is 
with  every  fulfilment  of  life.  It  is  possible  for 
a  man  always  to  represent  it  to  himself  as  if  it 
were  the  restriction,  restraint,  and  prohibition  of 
his  life.  The  man  passes  onward  into  the  fuller 
life  which  belongs  to  a  man.  He  merges  his 
selfishness  into  that  richer  life  which  is  offered 
to  human  kind.  He  makes  himself,  instead  of  a 
single,  selfish  man,  a  man  of  family;  and  it  is 
easy  enough  to  consider  that  marriage  and  the 
family  life  bring  immediately  restraints  and  pro- 
hibitions. The  man  may  may  not  have  the  free- 
dom which  he  used  to  have.  So  all  development 
of  education,  in  the  first  place,  offers  itself  to 
man,  or  seems  to  off'er  itself  to  man,  as  prohibi- 
tion and  imprisonment  and  restraint.  There 
is  no  doubt  truth  in  such  an  idea.  We  never 
lose  sight  of  it.  No  other  richer  and  fuller  idea 
which  we  come  to  by  and  by  ever  does  away  with 
the  thought  that  man's  advance  means  prohibi- 
tion and  self-denial,  that  in  order  that  man  shall 
become  the  greater  thing  he  must  cease  to  be  the 
poorer  and  smaller  thing  he  has  been.  But  yet 
there  is  immediately  a  greater  and  fuller.  When 
we  hear  those  words  of  Jesus,  we  see  immediately 
that  not  the  idea  of  imprisonment  but  the  idea 
of  liberty,  not  the  idea  of  restraint  but  that  of 
setting  free,  is  the  idea  which  is  really  in  His 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  103 

mind  when  he  offers  the  fullest  life  to  human 
kind.  Have  you. often  thought  of  how  the  whole 
Bible  is  a  Book  of  Liberty,  of  how  it  rings  with 
liberty  from  beginning  to  end,  of  how  the  great 
men  are  the  men  of  liberty,  of  how  the  Old 
Testament,  the  great  picture  which  forever 
shines,  is  the  emancipator,  leading  forth  out  of 
imprisonment  the  people  of  God,  who  were  to  do 
the  great  work  of  God  in  the  very  much  larger 
and  freer  lite  in  which  they  were  to  live?  The 
prophet,  the  psalmist,  are  ever  preaching  and 
singing  about  liberty,  the  enfranchisement .  of 
the  life  of  man,  that  man  was  not  imprisoned  in 
order  to  fulfil  himself,  but  shall  open  his  life, 
and  every  new  progress  shall  be  into  a  new 
region  of  existence  which  he  has  not  touched  as 
yet.  When  we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New  Testament,  how  absolutely  clear  that 
idea  is!  Christ  is  the  very  embodiment  of 
human  liberty.  In  His  own  personal  life  and 
in  everything  that  He  did  and  said.  He  was  for- 
ever uttering  the  great  gospel  that  man,  in  order 
to  become  his  completest,  must  become  his  freest, 
that  what  a  man  did  when  he  entered  into  a  new 
life  was  to  open  a  new  region  in  which  new 
powers  were  to  find  their  exercise,  in  which  he 
was  to  be  able  to  be  and  do  things  which  he  could 
not  be  and  do  in  more  restricted  life.-    It  is  the 


104  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

acceptance  of  that  idea,  it  seems  to  me,  that 
makes  us  true  disciples  of  Christ  and  of  that 
great  gospel,  and  that  transfigures  everything. 
When  my  friend  turns  over  some  new  leaf,  as  we 
say,  and  begins  to  live  a  new  life,  what  shall  we 
think  of  him?  I  learn  that  he  has  become  a 
Christian  man,  that  he  is  doing  something,  that 
he  is  working  in  a  way  and  living  a  life  which 
I  have  not  known  before.  What  is  my  impres- 
sion in  regard  to  him?  Is  not  your  impression, 
as  you  look  upon  that  man,  that  somehow  or 
other  he  has  entered  into  a  slavery  or  bondage, 
that  he  has  taken  upon  his  life  restrictions  and 
imprisonments  which  he  did  not  have  before? 
And  you  think  of  him,  perhaps,  as  a  man  who 
has  done  a  wise  and  prudent  thing,  who  has  done 
something  that  is  going  to  be  for  his  benefit 
some  day  in  some  distant  and  half -realized  world, 
but  as  a  man  who,  for  the  present,  has  laid  a 
burden  and  bondage  upon  his  life.  That  is 
never  the  tone  of  Christ ;  it  is  never  the  tone  of 
the  Christian  gospel.  When  a  man  turns  away 
from  his  sins  and  enters  into  energetic  holiness, 
when  a  man  sacrifices  his  own  self-indulgence  and 
goes  forth  a  pure  servant  of  his  God  and  his  fel- 
low-men, there  is  only  one  cry  in  the  whole  gos- 
pel of  that  man,  and  that  is  the  cry  of  freedom. 
As  soon  as  he  can  catch  that,  as  soon  as  I  can 


TUUE  LIBERTY.  105 

feel  about  my  friend,  who  has  become  a  better 
man,  that  he  has  become  a  larger  and  not  a 
smaller,  a  freer  and  not  a  more  imprisoned  man, 
as  soon  as  I  lift  up  my  voice  and  say  that  the 
man  is  free,  then  I  understand  him  more  fully, 
and  he  becomes  a  revelation  to  me  in  the  higher 
and  richer  life  which  is  possible  for  me  to  live. 
But  think  of  it  for  yourselves,  for  a  moment,  and 
ask  what  freer  life  really  is.  Try  to  give  a  defi- 
nition of  liberty,  and  I  know  not  what  it  can  be 
said  to  be  except  something  of  this  kind :  Liberty 
is  the  fullest  opportunity  for  man  to  be  and  do 
the  very  best  that  is  possible  for  him.  I  know 
of  no  definition  of  liberty,  that  oldest  and  dearest 
phrase  of  men,  and  sometimes  the  vaguest  also, 
except  that.  It  has  been  perverted,  it  has  been 
distorted  and  mystified,  but  that  is  what  it  really 
means :  the  fullest  opportunity  for  a  man  to  do 
and  be  the  very  best  that  is  in  his  personal 
nature  to  do  and  to  be.  It  immediately  follows 
that  everything  which  is  necessary  for  the  full 
realization  of  a  man's  life,  even  though  it  seems 
to  have  the  character  of  restraint  for  a  moment, 
is  really  a  part  of  the  process  of  his  enfranchise- 
ment, is  the  bringing  forth  of  him  to  a  fuller 
liberty.  You  see  a  man  coming  forward  and 
offering  himself  as  one  of  the  defenders  of  his 
country  in  his  country's  need.     You  see  him 


106  PEBFECT  FREEDOM, 

standing  at  the  door  where  men  are  being  re- 
ceived as  recruits  into  the  army  of  the  coun- 
try. He  wants  liberty.  He  wants  to  be  able 
to  do  that  which  he  cannot  do  in  his  poor,  per- 
sonal isolation  here  at  home.  He  wants  the 
badge  which  will  give  him  the  right  to  go  forth 
and  meet  the  enemies  of  his  country,  and  he 
enrolls  himself  among  these  men.  He  makes 
himself  subject  to  obligations,  duties,  and  drill. 
They  are  a  part  of  his  enfranchisement.  They 
are  really  the  breaking  of  the  fetters  upon  his 
slavery,  the  sending  him  forth  into  freedom. 
He  is  like  a  bit  of  iron  or  steel  that  lies  upon 
the  ground.  It  lies  neglected  and  perfectly  free. 
You  see  it  is  made  by  the  adjustment  of  the  end 
of  it  so  that  it  can  be  set  into  a  great  machine 
and  become  part  of  a  great  working  system.  But 
there  it  lies.  Will  you  call  it  free?  It  is  bound 
to  be  nothing  there.  It  is  absolutely  separate, 
and  with  its  own  personality  distinct  and  indi- 
vidual and  all  alone.  What  is  to  make  that  bit 
of  iron  a  free  bit  of  iron,  to  let  it  go  forth  and  do 
the  thing  which  it  was  meant  to  do,  but  the  tak- 
ing of  it  and  the  binding  of  it  at  both  ends  into 
the  structure  of  which  it  was  made  to  be  a  part? 
It  seems  to  me  the  binding  of  a  man,  —  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  binding  of  the  iron  is  not  the  yield- 
ing of  its  freedom.    It  is  not  merely  after  finding 


TBUE  LIBERTY.  107 

its  place  within  the  system  that  it  first  achieves 
its  freedom  and  so  joins  in  the  music  and  par- 
takes of  the  courses  with  which  the  whole  en- 
ginery is  filled.  Is  not  it,  then,  for  the  first  time 
a  free  bit  of  iron,  having  accomplished  all  that 
it  was  made  to  do  when  it  came  forth  from  the 
forge  of  the  master,  who  had  this  purpose  in  his 
mind?  This,  then,  is  freedom;  everything  is 
part  of  the  enfranchisement  of  a  man  which 
helps  to  put  him  in  the  place  where  he  can  live 
his  best.  Therefore  every  duty,  every  will  of 
God,  every  commandment  of  Christ,  every  self- 
surrender  that  a  man  is  called  upon  to  obey  or 
to  make  —  do  not  think  of  it  as  if  it  were  simply 
a  restraint  to  liberty,  but  think  of  it  as  the  very 
means  of  freedom,  by  which  we  realize  the  very 
purpose  of  God  and  the  fulfilment  of  our  life. 
It  is  interesting  to  see  how  all  that  is  true  in 
regard  to  the  matter  of  belief,  doctrine,  and  opin- 
ions which  we  are  to  accept.  How  strange  it 
very  often  seems  that  men  go  to  the  Church,  or  to 
one  another,  and  say :  "  Must  I  believe  this  doc- 
trine in  order  that  I  can  enter  into  the  Church?  " 
"  Must  I  believe  this  doctrine  in  order  that  I  may 
be  saved?  "  men  say,  with  a  strange  sort  of  notion 
about  what  salvation  is.  How  strange  it  seems, 
when  we  really  have  got  our  intelligence  about 
us  and  know  what  it  is  to  believe !     To  believe 


108  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

a  new  truth,  if  it  be  really  truth  and  we  really 
believe  it,  is  to  have  entered  into  a  new  region, 
in  which  our  life  shall  find  a  new  expansion  and 
a  new  youth.  Therefore,  not "  Must  we  believe?  " 
but  "May  I  believe?''  is  the  true  cry  of  the 
human  creature  who  is  seeking  for  the  richest 
fulfilment  of  his  life,  who  is  working  that  his 
whole  nature  may  find  its  complete  expansion 
and  so  its  completest  exercise.  We  talk  a  great 
deal  in  these  days  and  in  this  place  about  a 
liberal  faith.  What  is  a  liberal  faith,  my  friends  ? 
It  seems  to  me  that  by  every  true  meaning  of 
the  word,  by  every  true  thought  of  the  idea,  a 
liberal  faith  is  a  faith  that  believes  much,  and 
not  a  faith  that  believes  little.  The  more  a  man 
believes,  the  more  liberally  he  exercises  his 
capacity  of  faith,  the  more  he  sends  forth  his 
intelligence  into  the  mysteries  of  God,  the  more 
he  understands  those  things  which  God  chooses 
to  reveal  to  his  creatures,  the  more  liberally  he 
believes.  Let  yourselves  never  think  that  you 
grow  liberal  in  faith  by  believing  less ;  always 
be  sure  that  the  true  liberality  of  faith  can  only 
come  by  believing  more.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that 
as  soon  as  a  man  becomes  eager  for  belief,  for  the 
truth  of  God  and  for  the  mysteries  with  which 
God's  universe  is  filled,  he  becomes  all  the  more 
critical  and  careful.     He  will  not  any  longer,  if 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  109 

lie  were  before,  be  simply  greedy  of  things  to 
believe,  so  that  if  any  superstition  comes  offer- 
ing itself  to  him  he  will  not  gather  it  in  in- 
discriminately and  believe  it  without  evidence, 
without  examination.  He  becomes  all  the  more 
critical  and  careful,  the  more  he  becomes  assured 
that  belief,  and  not  unbelief,  is  the  true  condition 
of  his  life.  The  truth  that  God  has  entered  into 
this  world  in  wondrous  ways  and  filled  its  life 
with  Jesus  Christ,  the  truth  that  man  has  a  soul 
and  not  simply  a  body,  that  he  has  a  spiritual 
need,  that  God  cares  for  him  and  he  is  to  care 
for  himself,  that  there  is  an  immortal  life,  and 
that  that  which  we  call  faith  is  but  the  opening 
of  a  gate,  the  pushing  back  of  a  veil,  —  shall  a 
man  believe  those  things  as  imprisonments  of  his 
nature,  and  shall  it  not  make  him  larger?  Shall 
it  not  be  the  indulgence  of  his  life  when  he  enters 
into  the  great  certainties  which  so  are  offered  to 
his  belief,  believing  them  in  his  own  way?  Let 
us  always  feel  that  to  accept  a  new  belief  is  not  to 
build  a  wall  beyond  which  we  cannot  pass,  but  is 
to  open  the  door  to  a  great  fresh,  free  region,  in 
which  our  souls  are  to  live.  And  just  so  it  is  when 
we  come  to  the  moral  things  of  life.  The  man  puts 
aside  some  sinfulness.  He  breaks  down  the  wall 
that  has  been  shutting  his  soul  out  of  its  highest 
life.    He  has  been  a  drunkard,  and  he  becomes  a 


110  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

sober  man.  He  has  been  a  cheat  and  becomes  a 
faithful  man.  He  has  been  a  liar  and  becomes 
a  truthful  man.  He  has  been  a  profligate,  and 
he  becomes  a  pure  man.  What  has  happened  to 
that  man?  Shall  he  simply  think  of  himself  as 
one  who  has  crushed  this  passion,  shut  down 
this  part  of  his  life?  Shall  he  simply  think  of 
himself  as  one  who  has  taken  a  course  of  self- 
denial?  Nay.  It  is  self-indulgence  that  a  man 
has  really  entered  upon.  It  is  an  indulgence  of 
the  deepest  part  of  his  own  nature,  not  of  his 
unreal  nature.  He  has  risen  and  shaken  himself 
like  a  lion,  so  that  the  dust  has  fallen  from  his 
mane,  and  all  the  great  range  of  that  life  which 
God  gave  him  to  live  lies  before  him.  This  is 
the  everlasting  inspiration.  This  is  the  illumi- 
nation. I  don't  wonder  that  men  refuse  to  give 
up  evil  if  it  simply  seems  to  them  to  be  giving 
up  the  evil  way,  and  no  vision  opens  before  them 
of  the  thing  that  they  may  be  and  do.  I  don't 
wonder  that,  "if  the  negative,  restricting,  impris- 
oning conception  of  the  new  life  is  all  that  a  man 
gets  hold  of,  he  lingers  again  and  again  in  the  old 
life.  But  just  as  soon  as  the  great  world  opens 
before  him  then  it  is  like  a  prisoner  going  out 
of  the  prison  door,  is  there  no  lingering?  Does 
not  the  baser  part  of  him  cling  to  the  old 
prison,  to  the  ease  and  the  provision  for  him. 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  Ill 

to  the  absence  of  anxiety  and  of  energy?  I 
think  there  can  hardly  be  a  prisoner  who,  with 
any  leap  of  heart,  goes  out  of  the  prison  door, 
when  his  term  is  finished,  and  does  not  even  look 
into  that  black  horror  where  he  has  been  living, 
cast  some  lingering,  longing  look  behind.  He 
comes  to  the  exigencies,  to  the  demands  of  life, 
to  the  necessity  of  making  himself  once  more  a 
true  man  among  his  fellow-men.  But  does  he 
stop?  He  comes  forth,  and  if  there  be  the  soul 
of  a  man  in  him  still,  he  enters  into  the  new  life 
with  enthusiasm,  and  finds  the  new  powers 
springing  in  him  to  their  work.  And  if  it  be 
so  with  every  special  duty,  then  with  that  great 
thing  which  you  and  I  are  called  upon  to  do  — 
the  total  acceptance  by  our  nature  of  the  will  of 
God,  the  total  acceptance  by  our  nature  of  the 
mastery  of  Jesus  Christ.  Oh!  how  this  world 
has  perverted  words  and  meanings,  that  the 
mastery  of  Jesus  Christ  should  seem  to  be  the 
imprisonment  and  not  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  soul!  When  I  bring  a  flower  out  of  the 
darkness  and  set  it  in  the  sun,  and  let  the  sun- 
light come  streaming  down  upon  it,  and  the 
flower  knows  the  sunlight  for  which  it  was  made 
and  opens  its  fragrance  and  beauty ;  when  I  take 
a  dark  pebble  and  put  it  into  the  stream  and  let 
the  silver  water  go  coursing  down  over  it  and 


112  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

bringing  forth  the  hidden  color  that  was  in  the 
bit  of  stone,  opening  the  nature  that  is  in  them, 
the  flower  and  stone  rejoice.  I  can  ahnost  hear 
them  sing  in  the  field  and  in  the  stream.  What 
then?  Shall  not  man  bring  his  nature  out  into 
the  fullest  illumination,  and  surprise  himself  by 
the  things  that  he  might  do?  Oh!  the  littleness 
of  the  lives  that  we  are  living !  Oh !  the  way  in 
which  we  fail  to  comprehend,  or  when  we  do 
comprehend,  deny  to  ourselves  the  bigness  of 
that  thing  which  it  is  to  be  a  man,  to  be  a  child 
of  God!  Sometimes  it  dawns  upon  us  that  we 
can  see  it  opening  into  the  vision  of  these  men 
and  women  in  the  New  Testament.  Sometimes 
there  opens  to  us  the  picture  of  this  thing  that 
we  might  be,  and  then  there  are  truly  the  trial 
moments  of  our  life.  Then  we  lift  up  ourselves 
and  claim  our  liberty  or,  dastardly  or  cowardly, 
slink  back  into  the  sluggish  imprisonment  in 
which  we  have  been  living.  How  does  all  this 
affect  that  which  we  are  continually  conscious 
of,  urging  upon  ourselves  and  upon  one  another? 
How  does  it  affect  the  whole  question  of  a  man's 
sins?  Oh!  these  sins,  the  things  we  know  so 
well!  As  we  sit  here  and  stand  here  one  entire 
hour,  as  we  talk  in  this  sort  of  way,  everybody 
knows  the  weaknesses  of  his  own  nature,  the  sins 
of  his  own  soul.     Don't  you  know  it?     What 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  113 

shall  we  think  about  those  sins?  It  seems  to  me, 
my  friends,  that  all  this  great  picture  of  the 
liberty  into  which  Christ  sets  man,  in  the  first 
place  does  one  thing  which  we  are  longing  to  see 
done  in  the  world.  It  takes  away  the  glamour 
and  the  splendor  from  sin.  It  breaks  that  spell 
by  which  men  think  that  the  evil  thing  is  the 
glorious  thing.  If  the  evil  thing  be  that  which 
Christ  has  told  us  that  the  evil  thing  is  —  which 
I  have  no  time  to  tell  you  now  —  if  every  sin 
that  you  do  is  not  simply  a  stain  upon  your  soul, 
but  is  keeping  you  out  from  some  great  and 
splendid  thing  which  you  might  do,  then  is 
there  any  sort  of  splendor  and  glory  about  sin? 
How  about  the  sins  that  you  did  when  you  were 
young  men?  How  can  you  look  back  upon  those 
sins  and  think  what  your  life  might  have  been 
if  it  had  been  pure  from  the  beginning,  think 
what  you  might  have  been  if  from  the  very 
beginning  you  had  caught  sight  of  what  it  was 
to  be  a  man?  And  then  your  boy  comes  along. 
What  are  the  men  in  this  town  doing  largely  in 
many  and  many  a  house,  but  letting  their  boys 
believe  that  the  sins  of  their  early  life  are  glori- 
ous things,  except  that  those  things  which  they 
did,  the  base  and  wretched  things  that  they  were 
doing  when  they  were  fifteen  and  twenty  and 
twenty-five  and  thirty  years  old,  are  the  true 


114  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

career  of  a  human  nature,  are  the  true  entrance 
into  human  life?  The  miserable  talk  about  sow- 
ing wild  oats,  about  getting  through  the  neces- 
sary conditions  of  life  before  a  man  comes  to 
solemnity!  Shame  upon  any  man  who,  having 
passed  through  the  sinful  conditions  and  habits 
and  dispositions  of  his  earlier  life,  has  not  car- 
ried out  of  them  an  absolute  shame  for  them, 
that  shall  let  him  say  to  his  boy,  by  word  and  by 
every  utterance  of  his  life  within  the  house 
where  he  and  the  boy  live  together,  "Eefrain, 
for  they  are  abominable  things !  "  To  get  rid  of 
the  glamour  of  sin,  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  it 
is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  dissipated  instead  of 
being  concentrated  to  duty,  to  get  rid  of  the  idea 
that  to  be  drunken  and  to  be  lustful  are  true  and 
noble  expressions  of  our  abounding  human  life, 
to  get  rid  of  any  idea  that  sin  is  aught  but 
imprisonment,  is  to  make  those  who  come  after  , 
us,  and  to  make  ourselves  in  what  of  life  is  left 
for  us,  gloriously  ambitious  for  the  freedom  of 
purity,  for  a  full  entrance  into  that  life  over 
which  sin  has  no  dominion.  And  yet,  at  the 
same  time,  don't  you  see  that  while  sin  thus 
becomes  contemptible  when  we  think  about  the 
great  illustration  of  the  will  of  God  and  Jesus 
Christ,  don't  you  see  how  also  it  puts  on  a  new 
horror?    That  which  I  thought  I  was  doing  in 


TBUE  LIBEBTT.  115 

the  halls  of  my  imprisonment  I  have  really  been 
doing  within  the  possible  world  of  God  in  which 
I  might  have  been  free.  The  moment  I  see  what 
life  might  have  been  to  me,  then  any  sin  becomes 
dreadful  to  me.  Have  you  ever  thought  of  how 
the  world  has  stood  in  glory  and  honor  before 
the  sinless  humanity  of  Jesus  Christ?  If  any 
life  could  prove,  if  any  argument  could  show  on 
investigation  to-day  that  Jesus  did  one  sin  in  all 
his  life,  that  the  perfect  liberty  which  was  his 
perfect  purity  was  not  absolutely  perfect,  do  you 
realize  what  a  horror  would  seem  to  fall  down 
from  the  heavens,  what  a  constraint  and  burden 
would  be  laid  upon  the  lives  of  men,  how  the 
gates  of  men's  possibilities  would  seem  to  close 
in  upon  them?  It  is  because  there  has  been  that 
one  life  which,  because  absolutely  pure  from  sin, 
was  absolutely  free ;  it  is  because  man  may  look 
up  and  see  in  that  life  the  revelation  and  possi- 
bility of  his  own;  it  is  because  that  life,  echoing 
the  great  cry  throughout  the  world  that  man  every- 
where is  the  son  of  God,  offers  the  same  purity  — 
and  so  the  same  freedom  —  to  all  mankind ; 
it  is  for  that  reason  that  a  man  rejoices  to  cling 
to,  to  believe  in,  however  impure  his  life  is,  the 
perfect  purity,  the  sinlessness  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 
When  you  sin,  my  friends,  it  is  a  man  that  sins, 
and  a  man  is  a  child  of  God;  and  for  a  child  of 


116  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

God  to  sin  is  an  awful  thing,  not  simply  for  the 
stain  that  he  brings  into  the  divine  nature  that 
is  in  him,  but  for  the  life  from  which  it  shuts 
him  out,  for  the  liberty  which  he  abandons,  for 
the  enthrallment  which  it  lays  upon  the  soul. 
There  is  one  thing  that  people  say  very  care- 
lessly that  always  seems  to  me  to  be  a  dreadful 
thing  for  a  man  to  say.  They  say  it  when  they 
talk  about  their  lives  to  one  another,  and  think 
about  their  lives  to  themselves,  and  by  and  by 
very  often  say  it  upon  their  death-bed  with  the 
last  gasp,  as  though  their  entrance  into  the  eter- 
nal world  had  brought  them  no  deeper  enlighten- 
ment. One  wonders  what  is  the  revelation  that 
comes  to  them  when  they  stand  upon  the  borders 
of  the  other  side  and  are  in  the  full  life  and 
eternity  of  God.  The  thing  men  say  is,  "  I  have 
done  the  very  best  I  can."  It  is  an  awful  thing 
for  a  man  to  say.  The  man  never  lived,  save  he 
who  perfected  our  humanity,  who  ever  did  the 
very  best  he  could.  You  dishonor  your  life,  you 
not  simply  shut  your  eyes  to  certain  facts,  you 
not  simply  say  an  infinitely  absurd  and  foolish 
thing,  but  you  dishonor  your  human  life  if  you 
say  that  you  have  done  in  any  day  of  your  life 
or  in  all  the  days  of  your  life  put  together,  the 
very  best  that  you  could,  or  been  the  very  best 
man  that  you  could  be.     You!  what  are  you? 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  117 

Again  I  say,  The  child  of  God,  and  this  which  you 
have  been,  what  is  it?  Look  over  it,  see  how 
selfish  it  has  been,  see  how  material  it  has  been, 
how  it  has  lived  in  the  depths  Avhen  it  might 
have  lived  on  the  heights,  see  how  it  has  lived  in 
the  little  narrow  range  of  selfishness  when  it 
might  have  been  as  broad  as  all  humanity,  nay, 
when  it  might  have  been  as  the  God  of  humanity. 
Don't  dare  to  say  that  in  any  day  of  your  life,  or 
in  all  your  life  together,  you  have  done  the  best 
that  you  could.  The  Pharisee  said  it  when  he 
went  up  into  the  temple,  and  all  the  world  has 
looked  on  with  mingled  pity  and  scorn  ^at  the 
blindness  of  the  man  who  stood  there  and  paraded 
his  faithfulness ;  while  all  the  world  has  bent 
with  a  pity  that  was  near  to  love,  a  pity  that  was 
full  of  sympathy  because  man  recognized  his  con- 
dition and  experience,  for  the  poor  creature  grovel- 
ling upon  the  pavement,  unwilling  and  unable 
even  to  look  upon  the  altar,  but  who,  standing 
afar  off,  said,  "  God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner !  " 
Whatever  else  you  say,  don't  say,  "  I  have  been 
the  every  best  I  could."  That  means  that  you 
have  not  merely  lived  in  the  rooms  of  your 
imprisonment,  but  that  you  have  been  satisfied 
to  count  them  the  only  possible  rooms  of  your 
life,  and  that  the  great  halls  of  your  liberty  have 
never  opened  themselves  before  you.     Shall  not 


118  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

they  open  themselves  somehow  to  us  to-day,  my 
friends?  Shall  we  not  turn  away  from  this  hour 
and  go  back  into  our  business,  into  our  offices, 
into  the  shops,  into  the  crowded  streets,  bearing 
new  thoughts  of  the  lives  that  we  might  live, 
feeling  the  fetters  on  our  hands  and  feet,  feeling 
many  things  as  fetters  which  we  have  thought 
of  as  the  ornament  and  glory  of  our  life,  deter- 
mined to  be  unsatisfied  forever  until  these  fetters 
shall  be  stricken  off  and  we  have  entered  into 
the  full  liberty  which  comes  to  those  alone  who 
are  dedicated  to  the  service  of  God,  to  the  com- 
pletion of  their  own  nature,  to  the  acceptance  of 
the  grace  of  Christ,  and  to  the  attainment  of  the 
eternal  glory  of  the  spiritual  life,  first  here  and 
then  hereafter,  never  hereafter,  it  may  be,  except 
here  and  now,  certainly  here  and  now,  as  the 
immediate,  pressing  privilege  and  duty  of  our 
lives?  So  let  us  stand  up  on  our  feet  and  know 
ourselves  in  all  the  richness  and  in  all  the  awful- 
ness  of  our  human  life.  Let  us  know  ourselves 
children  of  God,  and  claim  the  liberty  which  God 
has  given  to  every  one  of  his  children  who  will 
take  it.  God  bless  you  and  give  some  of  you, 
help  some  of  us,  to  claim,  as  we  have  never 
claimed  before,  that  freedom  with  which  the  Son 
makes  free! 


THE   CHRIST   IN   WHOM   CHRIS- 
TIANS  BELIEVE. 


o>«<o 


I  WANT  to  read  to  you  again  the  words  of  Jesus 
in  the  eighth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John : 
"  Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which  believed 
on  him,  If  ye  continue  in  my  word,  then  are  ye 
my  disciples  indeed;  and  ye  shall  know  the 
truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free.  They 
answered  him,  We  be  Abraham's  seed,  and  were 
never  in  bondage  to  any  man :  how  say  est  thou, 
Ye  shall  be  made  free?  Jesus  answered  them. 
Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  Whosoever  com- 
mitteth  sin  is  the  servant  of  sin.  And  the 
servant  abideth  not  in  the  house  for  ever :  but 
the  Son  abideth  ever.  If  the  Son  therefore 
shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free  indeed." 
The  service  of  God  is  not  self-restraint,  but 
self-indulgence.  That  is  the  first  truth  of 
all  religion.  That  is  the  truth  which  we 
found  uttered  in  those  words  of  Jesus  when  we 
were  thinking  of  them  the  other  day.  That  is 
the  truth  to  which  we  return  as  we  come  back 
119 


120  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

again  to  think  of  those  words  and  all  that  they 
mean  and  all  that  the  speaker  of  them  means  to 
us  and  to  our  lives.  When  we  remember  that 
truth,  when  we  recognize  that  no  man  is  ever 
to  be  saved  except  by  the  fulfilment  of  his  own 
nature,  and  not  by  the  restraint  of  his  nature, 
when  we  recognize  that  no  man,  no  personal, 
individual  man,  is  ever  to  be  ransomed  from  his 
sins  except  by  having  opened  to  him  a  larger  and 
fuller  life  into  which  he  has  entered,  we  seem  to 
have  displayed  to  us  a  large  region,  into  which 
we  are  tempted  to  enter,  and  which  is  so  rich 
and  inviting  to  us  that  we  immediately  begin  to 
ask  ourselves  if  it  is  possible  that  there  should 
be  such  a  region.  It  is  simply  a  great  dream 
that  we  set  before  us.  It  is  something  that  we 
imagine,  something  that  comes  out  of  the  imagi- 
nations and  anticipations  of  our  own  hearts, 
simply  stimulated  by  the  possibilities  of  the  life 
in  which  we  are  living.  It  would  be  very  muph 
indeed,  if  it  were  only  that.  It  would  bear  a 
certain  testimony  of  itself,  if  it  simply  came  out 
of  the  perpetual  dissatisfaction  of  men's  souls, 
even  if  there  were  no  distinct  manifestation  of 
that  life  and.no  possibility  of  entering  into  it  at 
once  with  our  own  personal  consecration,  with 
the  resolution  of  our  own  wills.  But  if  it  were 
simply  a  dream,  ultimately  it  must  fade  away 


THE  CHRIST,  121 

out  of  the  thoughts  of  men.  It  is  impossible 
that  men  should  keep  on,  year  after  year,  age 
after  age,  this  simple  dream  of  something  which 
does  not  exist.  It  would  be  like  those  pictures 
which  the  poet  has  drawn,  something  which 
appeals  to  nothing  in  our  human  nature  and 
stands  only  as  a  parable  of  something  that  is  a 
great  deal  lower  than  itself.  The  poet  pictures 
to  us  in  his  imagination  those  things  which  do 
not  appeal  to  our  life,  because  they  find  nothing 
to  correspond  to  their  high  portraits,  to  show 
those  transformations  of  nature  into  something 
that  is  entirely  different  and  foreign  to  itself. 
If  religion  be  simply  the  dream  that  some  men 
hold  it  to  be,  if  it  simply  be  the  cheating  of 
man's  soul  with  that  which  has  no  reality  to 
correspond  to  it,  then  it  will  be  no  more  than 
this.  Is  there  any  assurance  that  is  given  to  us, 
that  is  before  the  soul  of  man,  of  some  great  new 
life  which  it  is  given  for  man  to  seek,  without 
which  it  is  given  for  no  man  to  be  satisfied?  I 
do  not  know  where  any  man  could  find  that 
assurance  absolutely  and  entirely,  unless  there 
had  stood  forth  before  us  the  person  of  Him  who 
spoke  these  words  and  who  manifested  them  in 
His  life.  And  therefore  it  is  that,  having  pict- 
ured to  you  the  richness  of  the  life  which  is 
open  to  every  man,  his  own  true  life,  the  large 


122  PEBFECT  FBEEDOM. 

freedom  into  which  he  may  go  if,  giving  up  his 
sins  he  enters  into  the  fulness  of  the  life  of  God, 
I  cannot  help  now  calling  you  to  think  about 
Him  who  gives,  not  merely  by  His  words,  but  by 
the  whole  of  His  own  person  and  life,  that  mani- 
festation of  the  reality  of  the  divine  existence 
and  tempts  us  to  follow  after  Him.  In  other 
words,  we  come  to-day  to  think  of  Christ, 
Christ  who  claims  to  be  the  master  of  the  world, 
Christ  from  whom  the  revelation  of  that  higher 
life  has  come,  not  in  its  first  instance  in  the 
manifestation  of  the  words  which  he  spoke,  for  it 
had  been  the  dream  of  human  hearts  through  all 
the  ages,  but  who  made  it  so  distinct  and  clear 
that  ever  since  the  time  of  Christ  men  have  been 
able  to  cease  to  seek  after  it,  men  have  never 
been  able  to  give  up  the  hope  and  dream  that  it 
was  there.  It  is  our  Christ  in  whom  we  Chris- 
tians believe.  It  is  the  Christ  in  whom  a  great 
many  of  you  listening  to  me  now  claim  to  believe 
—  I  do  myself  —  in  whom  many  of  you  do  be- 
lieve, whom  many  of  you  have  followed  into  that 
newer  life.  I  would  to  God  that  I  could  so  set 
Him  before  you  to-day,  could  so  make  you  feel 
his  actual  presence  in  the  life  which  we  are  liv- 
ing, which  we  may  be  living,  that  there  should 
be  no  question  in  any  man  of  the  power  that  is 
open  before  him  to  enter  into  the  higher  life  and 


THE  CHRIST.  123 

to  fulfil  his  soul  to  God.  What  I  want  to  do,  in 
the  few  moments  which  I  may  speak  to  you  this. 
morning,  is — laying  aside  all  the  theological  con- 
ceptions regarding  Him,  laying  aside  everything 
that  attaches  to  the  complications  and  mysteries 
in  which  His  nature  has  been  involved  in  men's 
dreams  of  Him,  laying  aside  everything  which 
the  churches  are  holding  as  the  special  doctrine 
of  their  especial  creed  —  to  go  back  to  the  very 
beginning  and  see  if  we  can  understand  anything 
of  what  it  is  —  this  personal  Christ,  who  lives 
here  in  the  world  and  manifests  the  power  of 
God  and  opens  the  possibility  of  every  man. 
Surely  it  is  good  that  we  should  know  something 
about  Him  of  whom  we  speak  so  much,  that  there 
should  be  some  clear  and  directest  conception  of 
one  whose  name  has  been  upon  the  lips  of.  men* 
for  eighteen  hundred  years;  and  it  is  possible 
for  us,  in  the  simplest  way,  to  understand  how 
His  power  has  come  into  the  world  and  to  see 
where  it  is  possible  that  it  should  come  and 
enrich  our  lives  and  make  us  different  men.  We 
go  back,  then,  to  the  very  beginning  of  the  aspi- 
ration after  God,  which  is  in  the  heart  of  man 
everywhere.  There  has  never  been  a  race  that 
has  been  without  it.  There  has  never  been  a 
generation  that  has  not  reached  forward  and 
thought  there  was  a  higher  life,  a  fuller  liberty, 


124  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

to  which  it  could  come.  It  has  been  in  all  the 
religions  which  have  been  not  simply  fears,  but 
which  have  been  the  highest  utterances  of  all  the 
different  races  in  all  the  different  generations  of 
mankind  and  all  the  different  countries  of  the 
world;  and  there  was  one  especial  race  in  one 
especial  part  of  the  world  in  whom  that  aspira- 
tion was  especially  strong.  We  will  not  ask  how 
it  came  to  be  there.  There  it  was  in  this  strange 
people  living  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Medi- 
terranean Sea,  and  in  all  its  history  marked  out 
by  the  strange  peculiarity  that  it  was  a  spiritual 
people,  that  in  the  midst  of  all  its  sins,  blunders, 
and  weaknesses  it  was  forever  lifting  up  its  soul 
to  God  and  striving  to  find  Him  out.  Very  often 
it  blundered  strangely  and  sadly.  Very  often  it 
'failed  to  get  that  for  which  it  was  seeking,  by  the 
very  impetuousness,  rashness,  and  earnestness  of 
search.  But  it  was  always  seeking  after  Him. 
And  the  years  rolled  by,  and  by  and  by  in  the 
midst  of  that  great  nation  there  was  a  little  com- 
pany of  men  who,  accompanying  one  another 
from  the  beginning  of  their  lives,  had  been 
searching  after  this  God  and  trying  everywhere 
if  they  could  find  Him.  And  one  day  they  heard 
that  down  by  the  river  which  ran  through  their 
country,  which  was  sacred  to  them  from  the 
multitude  of  old  national  associations,  there  was 


THE  CHRIST.  125 

a  great  teacher  come,  who  was  declaring  that  for 
which  iihe  human  soul  was  forever  reaching  after, 
the  need  of  escaping  from  sin  and  entering  upon 
and  leading  a  higher  life.  This  little  company 
went  down  and  met  two  disciples  of  John  the 
Baptist,  and  learned  from  them  everything  that 
they  had  to  teach  them.  Their  souls  were  stirred 
by  that  which  he  had  to  say.  But  one  day, 
while  he  was  teaching  them,  it  seemed  as  if  they 
had  come  to  an  end  of  that  which  he  could  teach 
them.  He  looked  up,  and  there  upon  the  hill 
just  above  the  river  there  was  passing  one  upon 
whom  the  gaze  of  the  fishermen  by  the  river 
immediately  kindled,  and  he  lifted  his  hand  and 
said,  "  He  is  the  one  who  is  to  teach  you  now. 
You  must  go  after  him.  Behold  the  Lamb  of 
God,  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world." 
Great  and  mysterious  words,  that  filled  in  that 
which  men  had  believed  in  all  the  records  they 
had  read  and  the  thinking  they  had  done  before ! 
And  they  turned  away  from  John  and  went  after 
this  new  teacher  and,  following  to  His  house, 
there  they  abode  with  Him  during  that  day  and 
the  days  that  followed  after.  Little  by  little,  as 
we  read  the  story  of  their  being  with  him,  we 
can  see  them  taken  into  His  power,  we  can  see 
how  there  was  a  certain  fascination  in  His  pres- 
ence which  laid  hold  upon  them.     It  seemed  at 


126  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

first  to  be  purely  human,  to  be  the  way  in  which 
one  strong  man  takes  possession  of  his, fellow- 
man  and  compels  him  to  rely  upon  him.  It  was 
upon  purely  human  ground.  It  was  in  the  mani- 
festation of  the  excellence  of  this  human  nature 
of  ours  that  they  believed  in  Jesus  and  gradually 
became  His  disciples.  Little  by  little  it  so  com- 
manded them  that  at  last  the  moment  came  when 
it  was  impossible  for  them  to  separate  themselves 
from  Him;  and  one  day,  when  the  people  were 
turning  away  from  Him  when  He  was  preaching 
and  saying  things  that  it  was  hard  for  them  to 
understand,  He  looked  around  upon  them  and 
said,  "Are  you  going  also,  will  you  leave  me 
now?  "  And  then  there  burst  forth  from  the  lips 
of  one  of  them,  the  most  strong  and  characteristic 
act  of  the  little  company,  those  great  words  that 
declared  how  He  had  become  necessary  to  them : 
"Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go?  Thou  hast  the 
words  of  eternal  life."  You  see  the  power  that 
Jesus  had  acquired  over  these  men.  You  see 
the  way  in  which  He  had  taken  them  absolutely 
into  His  dominion,  simply  because  of  the  mani- 
festation of  character  and  life,  simply  because  He 
had  shown  them  what  man  might  be  and  opened 
the  springs  of  the  better  life  in  themselves  by 
the  words  He  had  spoken  to  them.  And  then 
they  lived  on  with  Him  still,  and  by  and  by  they 


THE  CHEIST.  127 

had  become  so  convinced  by  His  truth  and  wis- 
dom, His  character  had  so  taken  possession  of 
them,  that  they  were  ready  to  believe  anything 
that  He  said.  One  day  He  lifted  up  His  voice 
and  declared  that  which  had  gradually  been 
dawning  upon  them  all  the  time,  that  He  was 
more  than  they  were,  that  He  had  brought  in 
some  mysterious  way  a  divine  life  into  this  world 
and  had  much  to  communicate  to  them.  He  told 
them  that  He  was  the  Father  from  whom  His 
life  and  their  life  had  come.  He  told  them  that 
He  and  the  Father  were  one.  He  told  them,  not 
in  theological  statement,  not  as  men  have  worked 
out  since  in  their  desire  to  know  it  fully,  but  in 
the  simple  statement  of  the  truth  that  could  be 
the  inspiration  of  their  life,  that  in  His  presence 
there  was  here  the  very  presence  of  God  among 
them.  It  was  not  strange  to  them,  though  human 
creatures,  though  men,  that  the  highest  aspira- 
tion of  their  humanity  had  never  thought  God 
so  far  from  this  world  that  it  seemed  to  them 
strange  that  there  should  be  in  very  human 
presence  the  divine  life  here  with  them.  They 
could  not  explain  it  and  did  not  try  to  explain  it. 
Here  it  was,  that  which  they  had  seen  shadowed 
in  the  divine st  men  whom  they  had  known,  that 
which  they  had  recognized.  Here  it  was  before 
them  in  this  being  who  had  won  such  a  power 


128  PERFECT  FBEEDOM. 

over  them  that  they  were  ready  to  accept  His  tes- 
timony with  regard  to  Himself.  Oh !  my  friends, 
let  us  not  feel  that  the  evidence  of  our  Christian 
faith  fails  when  it  is  seen  to  rest  upon  the  word 
of  Christ  Himself.  My  neighbor  knows  more  of 
himself  than  I  know  of  him.  I  know  more  of 
myself  than  any  man  can  know  of  me,  if  only  I 
be  earnest  and  sincere.  And  that  the  greatest 
of  men  who  ever  trod  this  earth  should  not  know 
more  of  His  nature  than  any  other  man  should 
know,  and  that  therefore  His  word  should  not  be 
the  richest  revelation  of  that  which  is  in  His  life 
and  makes  His  power  over  mankind,  that  is 
incredible.  Therefore  the  men  were  right  when 
they  believed  Jesus'  own  word  and  looked  to 
Him  for  the  divinity  which  He  said  was  present 
with  Him  upon  the  earth.  Then  His  life  went 
on,  and  by  and  by  fulfilled  itself  in  the  one  great 
action  in  which  He  declared  those  two  things 
which  He  longed  to  know,  the  life  and  newness 
of  God  and  the  power  of  their  human  nature. 
He  gave  His  life  for  them,  indeed,  in  the  awful 
suffering  that  preceded  and  that  culminated 
upon  the  cross.  He  gave  His  life  in  crucifixion 
for  them,  and  in  that  crucifixion  opened  the 
divinest  doors  of  His  life,  when  opening  a  sanct- 
uary of  sorrow ;  and  He  bade  them  enter  in  and 
know  there  the  absolute  life  of  God  and  the  great 


THE  CHBIST,  129 

capacity  of  human  nature  to  sacrifice  itself  for 
God.  And  before  He  died,  and  afterward,  He 
again  appeared  to  them.  He  spoke  great  words 
which  said  that  this  was  not  the  end  of  things, 
that  after  they  had  ceased  to  see  Him  and  touch 
Him  and  hear  His  voice  He  still  was  to  be  present 
in  the  world.  He  said  that  the  mysterious  pres- 
ence of  those  who  had  passed  away,  which  all  had 
known,  was  to  culminate  and  be  fulfilled  in  Him. 
"I  am  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of 
the  world."  Wherever  you  "  are  together  in  my 
name,  there  am  I."  Words  and  words  and  words 
again  like  those  He  spoke,  in  which  He  declared 
that  He  was  to  be  an  everlasting  presence  among 
mankind,  and  therefore  that  which  had  taken 
place  in  the  life  of  those  disciples  might  forever 
take  place ;  that  that  which  Jesus  had  done  in 
the  days  when  He  was  present  upon  the  earth 
should  be  continually  repeated,  in  that  He  was 
forever  to  do  that  which  He  had  been  doing,  giv- 
ing Himself  to  human  kind  for  their  inspiration, 
for  their  elevation,  for  their  correction,  for  their 
reproof,  as  He  had  been  doing,  their  salvation,  as 
He  had  been  doing  in  those  days  in  which  He- 
was  here  among  them.  Men  have  believed  that 
simply.  They  have  recognized  that  word  of 
Christ,  and  found  the  fulfilment  of  it  in  their 
own  lives  j  and  that  has  been  the  Christian  re- 


130  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

ligion, — just  exactly  what  it  was  in  the  old  days 
when  Jesus  was  present  in  Jerusalem  and  Gali- 
lee. Just  exactly  what  men  did  then  men  have 
been  doing  in  all  the  generations  that  have  come 
since.  Just  exactly  what  was  possible  then  is 
possible  for  them  now  —  that  we  may  become  the 
followers  of  that  same  Christ  and  the  receivers 
through  Him  of  the  divine  life,  by  which  alone 
the  human  life  is  perfected  and  fulfilled. 

That  is  the  Christian  religion.  That  is  the 
Christian  faith.  Is  it  not  clear  and  simple, 
whether  it  be  true  or  not?  My  friends,  you  may 
believe  it  or  you  may  disbelieve  it,  but  the  Chris- 
tian faith  is  clear  and  simple  enough  surely  in 
this  statement,  stripped  of  a  thousand  difficulties, 
perplexities,  and  bewilderments.  That  is  it,  that 
there  is  in  the  world  to-day  the  same  Christ  who 
was  in  the  world  eighteen  hundred  and  more 
years  ago,  and  that  men  may  go  to  Him  and 
receive  His  life  and  the  inspiration  of  His  pres- 
ence and  the  guidance  of  His  wisdom  just 
exactly  as  they  did  then.  If  you  and  I  had  been 
in  Jerusalem  in  those  old  days,  what  would  we 
have  done,  if  we  were  more  than  mere  creatures 
of  others,  more  than  men  merely  absorbed  in 
our  business,  if  there  were  any  stirring  in  our 
souls  after  the  deeper  and  diviner  desires,  could 
we,  would  we  have  been  satisfied  until  we  had 


THE  CHEIST.  131 

gone  wherever  He  might  be,  —  in  the  temple,  in 
the  courts,  or  on  the  country  road,  —  and  found 
that  Jesus,  and  entered  into  some  sympathy  with 
His  life,  that  He  might  give  to  us  what  revelation 
of  life  and  what  guidance  of  will  it  might  be  pos- 
sible should  come  from  Him  to  men  who  trusted 
Him,  until  we  had  entered  into  sympathy  with 
Him  and  the  fascinations  of  His  character? 
That  is  the  Christian  life,  my  friends,  the  thing 
we  make  so  vague  and  mysterious  and  difficult. 
That  is  the  Christian  life,  the  following  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

What  is  the  Christian?  Everywhere  the  man 
who,  so  far  as  he  comprehends  Jesus  Christ,  so 
far  as  he  can  get  any  knowledge  of  Him,  is  His 
servant,  the  man  who  makes  Christ  a  teacher  of 
his  intelligence  and  the  guide  of  his  soul,  the 
man  who  obeys  Christ  as  far  as  he  has  been  able 
to  understand  Him.  What,  you  say,  the  man 
who  imperfectly  understands  Christ,  who  don't 
know  anything  about  His  divinity,  who  denies 
the  great  doctrines  of  the  Church  in  regard  to 
Him,  is  he  a  Christian?  Certainly  he  is,  my 
friends.  There  is  no  other  test  than  this,  the 
following  of  Jesus  Christ.  So  far  as  any  soul 
deeply  consecrated  to  Him,  and  wanting  the 
influence  that  it  feels  that  He  has  to  give,  follows 
Christ,  enters  into  His  obedience  and  His  com- 


132  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

pany,  and  receives  His  blessings,  just  so  far  He 
is  able  to  bestow  it.  I  cannot  sympathize  with 
any  feeling  that  desires  to  make  the  name  of 
Christian  a  narrower  name.  I  would  spread  it 
just  as  wide  as  it  can  be  possibly  made  to  spread. 
I  would  know  any  man  as  a  Christian,  rejoice 
to  know  any  man  as  a  Christian,  whom  Jesus 
would  recognize  as  a  Christian,  and  Jesus  Christ, 
I  am  sure,  in  those  old  days  recognized  His 
followers  even  if  they  came  after  Him  with  the 
blindest  sight,  with  the  most  imperfect  recogni- 
tion and  acknowledgment  of  what  He  was  and  of 
what  He  could  do. 

And  then,  again,  is  it  not  very  strange,  cer- 
tainly, that  there  should  be,  in  these  later  days, 
in  all  these  centuries  that  have  passed  between 
the  day  of  Jesus  Christ  and  us,  that  there  should 
have  come  a  vast  accumulation  of  speculation 
and  conjecture,  of  theorizing  and  thought  with  re- 
gard to  Christ  and  what  He  was,  and  that  a  great 
deal  of  it  should  have  been  very  strange  and 
should  seem  to  us  to-day  to  have  been  very  silly, 
a  great  part  of  it  should  have  seemed  to  be  but  a 
work  of  intelligences  that  were  half  dulled  and 
blinded,  full  of  prejudice,  and  shrinking  from 
the  error  and  the  danger  in  which  they  stood? 
What  does  it  mean  —  all  these  complicated  the- 
ologies that  we  say  are  keeping  us  away  from  the 


THE  CHRIST.  133 

simple  following  of  the  grandest  figure  that  has 
ever  presented  Himself  before  human  kind?  I 
know  not  how  else  it  can  be  when  I  see  what  has 
been  the  power  of  Jesus  over  thoughts  and  homes 
and  hearts  of  men  through  all  these  years.  It 
seems  to  be  a  previous  necessity  that  He  who  most 
fastens  the  heart  and  life  of  man,  who  seems  to 
be  most  necessary  to  the  soul  of  men,  shall  so 
attract  their  thought,  shall  so  draw  them  all  to 
Himself  that  their  crudest  speculations,  that  their 
most  erroneous  conceptions,  shall  fasten  upon 
him,  and  they  shall  be  in  some  true  way  a  testi- 
mony of  the  way  in  which  He  has  always  held 
the  human  heart.  This  is  the  way  in  which  all 
crudities  of  theology,  all  the  weaknesses  of  spec- 
ulation, all  even  of  the  most  strange  and  foul 
thoughts  in  regard  to  the  life  of  Jesus  and  His 
manifestation  in  the  world,  have  accumulated 
around  that  gracious  figure,  so  simple  and  strong, 
which  walks  through  our  human  life  and  mani- 
fests to  us  the  God.  Surely  it  is  in  one  concep- 
tion of  it,  and  the  true  conception  of  it,  the  great 
perpetual  testimony  of  how  men  have  cared  about 
Jesus,  that  they  have  speculated  about  Him  in 
such  strange  perplexing  ways.  But  He  about 
whom  the  world  does  not  care  walks  through  the 
world  and  bears  His  simple  being.  There  is 
nothing  that  fastens  upon  Him,  that  perplexes 


134  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

His  life,  that  makes  mysterious  and  strange  the 
life  He  lives.  But  where  is  the  great  man  in  all 
the  history  of  human  kind  that  has  not  gathered 
about  his  person  and  work  the  speculations  of 
those  whom  we  find,  with  their  crude  and  un- 
guided  minds,  have  formed  their  theories  in 
regard  to  Him?  It  is  the  very  abundance  of  the 
strange  speculations  with  regard  to  Christ,  it  is 
the  very  strangeness  of  the  theories  that  have 
been  formed  with  regard  to  Him,  that  has  shown 
me  how  He  has  drawn  the  hearts  of  men,  how  He 
has  not  let  them  go,  but  compelled  them  to  fasten 
themselves  to  Him,  to  think  about  Him  and  try 
to  follow  Him  in  such  poor,  blind  ways  as  they 
were  able  to  give  themselves  to  Him  in.  This, 
then,  is  the  Christian  faith.  This  is  the  way  in 
which  the  larger  life  opens  before  mankind,  by 
the  following  of  a  person,  by  the  giving  of  the 
life  into  the  dominion  and  the  guidance  and  the 
obedience  of  one  who  goes  forward  into  that  life, 
himself  thoroughly  believing  in  it  —  for  Jesus 
believed  in  it  with  all  His  human  soul. 

But  then,  we  ask  ourselves,  is  it  possible  that 
we  can  gather  from  such  a  life  as  Jesus  lived  so 
long  ago,  a  life  that  was  lived  back  in  the  very 
dust  of  history  and  that  has  come  down  to  u$  in 
records  which  seem  sometimes  to  be  flecked  with 
tradition  and  obscured  with  the  distance  in  which 


THE  CHRIST.  135 

they  lived,  is  it  possible  that  I  should  get  from 
him  a  guidance  of  my  daily  life  here?  Am  I,  a 
man  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  everything 
has  changed,  in  Boston,  in  this  modern  civiliza- 
tion, —  can  Jesus  really  be  my  teacher,  my  guide, 
in  the  actual  duties  and  perplexities  of  my  daily 
life  and  lead  me  into  the  larger  land  in  which  I 
know  he  lives?  Ah!  the  man  knows  very  little 
about  the  everlasting  identity  of  human  nature, 
little  of  how  the  world  in  all  these  changeless 
ages  is  the  same,  who  asks  that;  very  little, 
also,  of  how  in  every  largest  truth  there  are  all 
particulars  and  details  of  human  life  involved; 
little  of  how  everything  that  a  man  is  to-day, 
upon  every  moment,  rests  upon  some  eternal 
foundation  and  may  be  within  the  power  of 
some  everlasting  law.  The  wonder  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  is  this  —  and  you  will  find  it  so  and 
you  have  found  it  so  if  you  have  ever  taken  your 
New  Testament  and  tried  to  make  it  the  rule  of 
your  daily  life  —  that  there  is  not  a  single  action 
that  you  are  called  upon  to  do  of  which  you  need 
be,  of  which  you  will  be,  in  any  serious  doubt  for 
ten  minutes  as  to  what  Jesus  Christ,  if  He  were 
here,  Jesus  Christ  being  here,  would  have  you 
do  under  those  circumstances  and  with  the  mate- 
rial upon  which  you  are  called  to  act.  Men  have 
tried  to  go  back  and  imitate  the  very  activities 


136  PEBFECT  FBEEDOM. 

of  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  do  the  very  things 
that  He  did.  Souls  have  fled  across  the  sea  and 
tried  upon  the  hills  and  in  the  plains  where 
Jesus  lived  to  reproduce  the  life  that  has  so 
fascinated  them.  They  were  poor  and  unphilo- 
sophic  souls.  The  soul  that  takes  in  Jesus' 
word,  the  soul  that  through  the  words  of  Jesus 
enters  into  the  very  person  of  Jesus,  the  soul 
that  knows  Him  as  its  daily  presence  and  its 
daily  law  —  it  never  hesitates.  Do  I  doubt  — 
I,  who  see  myself  called  upon  to  be  the  slave  of 
these  conditions  which  are  around  me  —  to  do  this 
thing?  Because  it  is  the  custom  of  the  business 
in  which  I  am  engaged,  do  I  doubt  for  a  moment  if 
I  turn  aside  and  open  this  ISTew  Testament,  which 
is  Jesus'  law  with  regard  to  that  thing?  I, 
with  my  passion  boiling  in  my  veins,  leading  me 
to  do  some  foul  act  of  outrageous  lust,  have  I  a 
single  moment's  doubt  what  Jesus  would  have 
me  do  if  He  were  here  —  what  Jesus,  being  here, 
really  wants  me  to  do?  There  is  no  single  act 
of  your  life,  my  friend,  there  is  no  single 
dilemma  in  which  you  find  yourself  placed,  in 
which  the  answer  is  not  in  Jesus  Christ.  I  do 
not  say  that  you  will  find  some  words  in  Jesus' 
teachings  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke, 
and  John  that  will  detail  exactly  the  condition 
in  which  you  find  yourself  placed;  but  I  do  say 


THE  CHBIST.  137 

that  if,  with  your  human  sympathies  and  your 
devoted  love,  you  can  feel  the  presence  of  that 
Jesus  behind  the  words  that  He  said,  the  personal 
perfectness,  the  divine  life  manifested  in  the 
human  life,  there  is  not  a  single  sin  or  tempta- 
tion to  sin  that  will  not  be  convicted. 

There  is  where  we  rest  when  we  claim  that 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  master  of  the  world,  that  He 
opens  the  great  richness  and  infinite  distances  of 
the  human  life,  that  He  shows  us  what  it  is  to  be 
men.  It  would  be  little  if  He  did  that  simply 
with  the  painting  of  some  glorious  vision  upon 
the  skies  beyond;  but  that  He  comes  into  your 
life  and  mine,  into  our  homes  and  our  shops, 
into  our  offices  and  on  our  streets,  and  there 
makes  known  in  the  actual  circumstances  of  our 
daily  life  what  we  ought  to  do  and  what  we 
ought  not  to  do  —  that  is  the  wonder  of  his  reve- 
lation ;  that  is  what  proclaims  him  to  be  the  Son 
of  God  and  the  Son  of  Man.  Think,  as  you  sit 
here,  of  anything  that  you  are  doing  that  is 
wrong,  of  any  habit  of  your  life,  of  your  self- 
indulgence,  or  of  that  great,  pervasive  habit  of 
your  life  which  makes  you  a  creature  of  the 
present  instead  of  the  eternities,  a  creature  of 
the  material  earth  instead  of  the  glorious  skies. 
Ask  of  yourself  of  any  habit  that  belongs  to  your 
own  personal  life,  and  bring  it  face  to  face  with 


188  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

Jesus  Christ  and  see  if  it  is  not  judged.  A 
judgment  day  that  is  far  away,  that  is  off  in  the 
dim  distance  when  this  world  is  done  —  it  shall 
come,  no  doubt.  I  know  none  of  us  can  know 
much  with  regard  to  it,  except  that  it  is  sure. 
But  the  judgment  day  that  is  here  now  is  Christ; 
the  judgment  day  that  is  right  close  to  your  life 
and  rebukes  you,  if  you  will  let  Him  rebuke  you 
every  time  you  sin,  the  judgment  day  that  is 
here  and  praises  you  and  bids  you  be  of  good 
courage,  when  you  do  a  thing  that  men  disown 
and  despise,  is  Christ.  Therefore  it  is  no  figure 
of  speech,  it  is  no  mere  ecstasy  of  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  preacher,  when  we  say  that  in  the 
midst  of  these  streets  of  ours,  more  real  than 
the  men  that  walk  in  them,  more  real  than  the 
sidewalks  that  are  under  our  feet,  and  the  build- 
ings that  tower  over  us,  there  walks  an  unseen 
presence.  An  unseen  presence?  Yes.  Are  you 
and  I  going  to  be  such  creatures  of  our  senses 
that  we  shall  not  believe  that  there  are  powers 
that  touch  us  that  we  cannot  see?  Am  I  going 
to  be  so  bound  down  to  these  poor  fingers  and  to 
these  poor  eyes  that  I  shall  know  myself  in  no 
larger  connection  with  the  great,  unseen  world? 
I  will  not.  No  great  man,  no  manly  man,  has 
ever  allowed  such  a  limitation  of  himself.  There 
is  the  unseen  presence  in  the  midst  of  our  life, 


THE  CHRIST,  139 

and  he  who  will  feel  it  may  feel  it,  and  that 
unseen  presence  speaks  to  him  continually.  It 
knows  every  one  of  us.  It  knows  the  rich  man 
and  knows  what  his  wealth  has  made  of  him. 
It  knows  whether  it  has  made  him  seliish.  Shall 
I  say  it?  He,  the  Christ,  the  present  Christ, 
knows  whether  the  rich  man's  riches  have  made 
him  selfish  and  base  and  mean,  covetous  and 
poor  and  little-souled,  or  whether  he  has  been 
glad  to  rise  to  the  greatness  of  his  privilege,  and 
be  the  very  utterance  of  the  ben,eficence  of  God 
upon  the  earth.  He  knows  the  poor  man  and 
his  struggles,  he  knows  the  poor  man  and  his 
self-respect.  He  speaks  to  the  poor  man's  soul, 
who  has  been  kept  poor  because  he  will  not  enter 
into  the  baser  methods  and  motives  of  our  mod- 
ern life,  and  is  despised,  and  says  to  him,  ^'  Be 
of  good  courage,  for  I  know  what  you  are."  He 
speaks  to  the  poor  in  distress  and  poverty.  He 
speaks  to  the  wretched  in  their  disappointment 
and  their  pain.  He  is  their  comforter.  He 
knows  every  sin.  He  knows  every  sorrow  of 
our  life.  He  goes,  unseen  on  earth,  into  the 
chambers  where  the  dead  lie  dead,  and  where  the 
sick  lie  dying,  and  He  speaks  His  words  of  con- 
solation. He  opens  up  the  glory  of  the  perfect 
life.  He  lays  his  hand  upon  the  mourner  whose 
soul  is  bowed  down  to  the  earth  and  says,  "  Look 


140  PEBFECT  FREEDOM. 

up,"  and  points  into  eternity  and  heaven.  All 
these  things  Christ  can  do  not  merely,  but  Christ 
is  doing.  He  is  the  inspiring  power  of  this  life, 
that  keeps  it  from  rotting  in  its  corruption  and 
degradation.  We  dwell  too  much,  I  think,  upon 
some  of  these  things ;  we  cannot  dwell  too  much, 
perhaps,  but  we  dwell  out  of  proportion,  it  may 
be,  to  the  thought  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  comforter 
of  sorrow.  He  is  the  comforter  of  sorrow,  for 
he  knew  and  he  knows  what  sorrow  is.  In  His 
own  crucifixion,  in  that  which  came  before  His 
crucifixion.  He  knew  the  suffering  of  this  earthly 
life.  There  is  no  human  being  who  ever  has 
known  the  misery  of  man  as  Jesus,  knows  it,  and 
so  He  comes  to  all  sorrows  with  tender  consola- 
tion. God  grant,  God  grant  He  may  come  to  any 
of  you  who  have  come  into  these  doors  to-day 
with  a  sorrow,  with  a  fear,  with  a  dread  upon 
your  hearts,  with  souls  that  are  wrung,  with 
bodies  that  are  suffering!  God  grant  that  the 
Christ  may  comfort  you,  may  comfort  you !  But 
not  only  that.  Shall  there  be  no  Christ  for  those 
who  for  the  moment  seem  to  need  no  comfort? 

Shall  there  be  no  Christ  for  the  strong  men 
who  have  before  them  the  duties  of  their  life, 
and  who  want  the  strength  with  which  to  do 
them?  Shall  there  be  no  Christ  for  the  young 
men,  the  young  men   standing   in  danger,  but 


THE  CUBIST.  141 

also  standing  in  such  magnificent  and  splendid 
chances?  It  is  great  to  think  of  Christ  standing 
by  the  sorrowing  and  comforting  them.  It  is 
great, — we  will  not  say  it  is  greater, —  it  is  very 
great,  when  by  the  side  of  the  young  man  just 
entering  into  life  there  stands  the  Christ,  saying 
to  his  soul,  with  the  voice  that  he  cannot  fail  to 
hear:  "Be  pure,  be  strong,  be  wise,  be  indepen- 
dent; rejoice  in  Me  and  My  appreciation.  Let 
the  world  go,  if  it  is  necessary  that  the  world 
should  go.  Serve  the  world,  but  do  not  be  the 
servant  of  the  world.  Make  the  world  your  ser- 
vant by  helping  the  world  in  every  way  in  which 
you  can  minister  to  its  life.  Be  brave,  be  strong, 
be  manly  by  My  strength."  Oh!  young  man,  if 
you  can  hear  the  Christ  speak  to  you  like  that 
behind  all  the  traditions  of  the  street,  behind 
the  teachings  of  the  books,  behind  all  that  the 
wise  and  successful  men  say  to  you,  behind  all 
the  cynics  and  sneerers  say  to  you,  the  great, 
strong,  healthy  voice  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  be- 
lieves in  man  because  He  has  known  man  filled 
with  divinity,  and  believes  in  you  because  He 
knows  that  which  has  been  set  before  you  by 
your  Father  in  the  sending  out  of  your  life,  and 
who  longs  and  prays  and  waits  to  strengthen 
you,  that  you  may  do  your  work,  that  you  may 
escape  from  sin,  that  you  may  live  your  life. 


142  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

this  great  figure  of  the  present  Christ  that 
Christianity  can  produce  —  it  is  not  the  memory 
of  something  that  is  away  back  in  the  past,  it  is 
not  the  anticipation  of  something  to  come  in  the 
future.  We  talk  about  Christ  the  Saviour,  and 
think  about  Calvary  long  ago.  We  talk  about 
the  Christ  the  Judge,  and  think  of  a  great  white 
throne  set  in  some  mystic  valley  of  Jehoshaphat, 
where  some  day  the  world  is  to  be  judged.  We 
do  not  so  get  hold  of  Christ.  The  Christ  who  is 
in  the  past  is  not  our  Christ  unless  His  power 
holds  forth,  the  power  of  His  spirit,  which  is  the 
whole  knowledge  of  the  life  in  which  we  live. 
We  think  of  the  Christ  of  the  future,  for  whom 
all  the  world  is  waiting.  He  will  never  enter 
into  us  and  lead  us  unless  we  know  that  He  is 
here  and  now.  It  does  seem  to  me  sometimes 
that  if  men  would  only  take  religion  as  a  real 
and  present  thing,  and  if,  instead  of  worship- 
ping it  in  the  past  and  expecting  it  with  fear 
and  dread  and  vain  hope  in  the  future,  it 
could  be  a  real  thing  with  them  here  and  now, 
something  in  which  they  are  to  live,  not  to  which 
they  are  to  flee  in  moments  of  doubt,  not  of 
which  they  should  make  rescue,  but  in  which 
they  should  do  all  their  work  and  live,  then  re- 
ligion would  be  to  the  soul  of  man  so  that  it  could 
not  be  cast  aside,  so  that  they  must  enter  into 


THE  CHRIST,  143 

it  and  take  it  into  themselves  and  make  it  their 
own.  Religion  is  not  the  simple  fire-escape  that 
you  build,  in  anticipation  of  a  possible  danger, 
upon  the  outside  of  your  dwelling  and  leave 
there  until  danger  comes.  You  go  to  it  some 
morning  when  a  fire  breaks  out  in  your  house, 
and  the  poor  old  thing  that  you  built  up  there, 
and  thought  you  could  use  some  day,  is  so  rusty 
and  broken,  and  the  weather  has  so  beaten  upon 
it,  and  the  sun  so  turned  its  hinges,  that  it  will 
not  work.  That  is  the  condition  of  a  man  who 
has  built  himself  what  seems  to  be  a  creed  of 
faith,  a  trust  in  God  in  anticipation  of  the  day 
when  danger  is  to  overtake  him,  and  has  said  to 
himself,  I  am  safe,  for  I  will  take  refuge  in  it 
then.  But  religion  is  the  house  in  which  we  live, 
it  is  the  table  at  which  we  sit,  it  is  the  fireside 
to  which  we  draw  near,  the  room  that  arches  its 
graceful  and  familiar  presence  over  us ;  it  is  the 
bed  on  which  we  lie  and  think  of  the  past  and 
anticipate  the  future  and  gather  our  refresh- 
ment. There  is  no  Christ  except  the  present 
Christ  for  every  man,  unto  whom  all  the  power 
of  the  historic  Christ  is  always  appearing,  and 
who  is  great  with  all  the  sweet  solemnity  that 
comes  from  the  knowledge  of  what  in  the  future 
He  is  to  be  to  the  world  and  to  the  soul.  I  am 
anxious  to-day  to  impress  this  upon  you:  that 


144  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

the  Christian  faith  is  not  a  dogma,  it  is  not 
primarily  a  law,  but  is  a  personal  presence  and 
an  immediate  life  that  is  right  here  and  now. 
I  am  anxious  to  have  you  know  that  to  be  a 
Christian  does  not  mean  primarily  to  believe 
this  or  that.  It  does  not  mean  primarily,  al- 
though it  means  necessarily  afterward,  to  do  this 
or  that.  But  it  means  to  know  the  presence  of 
a  true  personal  Christ  among  us  and  to  follow. 
Here  is  the  only  true  power  by  which  a  religion 
can  become  perpetual.  Men  outgrow  many 
dogmas  which  they  hold.  The  lines  in  which 
they  try  to  live  change  their  application  to  their 
lives.  But  I  know  a  person  with  a  deep,  true 
life;  I  enter  into  a  friendship  with  one  who  is 
worthy  I  should  be  his  friend,  and  he  is  mine 
always.  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  sort  of 
talk  that  we  hear  about  a  faith  that  they  held 
once,  but  they  have  outgrown?  What  is  the 
reason  of  this  expectation  that  seems  to  have 
spread  itself  abroad,  of  necessity  that  the  boy 
who  had  a  religion  should  lose  his  religion  some 
time  or  other,  and  that  by  and  by  he  should  take 
up  a  man's  religion  somewhere  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  gulf  of  infidelity  and  godlessness, 
through  which  he  has  passed  in  the  meanwhile? 
You  expect  your  boy  of  ten  years  old  to  be  re- 
ligious with  a  child's  sweet,  trusting  faith;  and 


THE  CHRIST.  145 

you  hope  that  your  man  of  forty  and  fifty,  beaten 
by  the  world,  is  to  have  found  a  God  who  can  be 
his  salvation.  But  the  years  between?  What  do 
you  think  of  your  young  men  of  fifteen,  twenty, 
twenty-five,  and  thirty  years  old?  To  have 
outgrown  the  boy's  faith,  and  not  to  have  come 
to  the  man's  faith?  That'  seems  almost  to  be  an 
awful  fate  and  destiny  which  you  expect  for 
them.  But  if  our  faith  be  this,  then  there  shall 
be  no  need,  no  chance  that  a  man  shall  outgrow 
it.  Know  Christ  with  the  first  conceptions,  im- 
perfect and  crude,  of  his  boy's  life,  and  he  shall 
go  on  knowing  more  and  more  of  that  Christ. 
That  friend,  the  Christ  he  knows  at  twenty -five, 
shall  be  different  from  the  Christ  he  knew  at 
ten,  just  exactly  as  the  friend  I  know  at  fifty  is 
different  from  the  friend  I  knew  at  thirty,  twenty 
years  ago;  and  yet  He  is  the  same  friend  still, 
forever  opening  the  richness  of  an  ever  richer 
life,  filling  it  with  new  experiences,  with  new 
manifestations  of  Himself.  Let  him  drop  some 
thing  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  a  part  of  the 
religion,  but  was  only  a  temporary  phase  or 
condition  of  it,  going  forward  with  the  soul  all 
through  the  opening  stages  of  life,  and  at  last 
going  forward  with  the  soul  into  the  life  where 
it  shall  see  as  all  along  it  has  been  seen,  and 
know  as  it  has  been  known.     The  old  legend  waHs 


146  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

that  the  clothes  of  the  Israelites,  which  the  Bible 
said  waxed  not  old  upon  them  in  the  desert  dur- 
ing those  forty  years,  not  merely  waxed  not  old 
those  forty  years,  but  grew  with  their  growth,  so 
that  the  little  Hebrew  who  crossed  the  Eed  Sea 
in  his  boy's  clothes  wore  the  same  clothes  when 
he  entered  into  the  Promised  Land.  It  is  the 
parable  of  that  which  comes  to  the  man  who  has 
a  true  Christian  faith,  a  faith  which  comes  in 
the  personal  friendship  of  Christ,  a  faith  which 
comes  not  in  the  belief  of  certain  things  about 
Him,  not  in  the  doing  slavishly  of  certain  things 
which  it  seemed  as  if  it  had  been  said  by  Him 
that  we  must  do,  but  in  the  personal  entrance 
into  His  nature  in  a  life  for  Him,  in  which  He 
is  able  to  send  His  life  down  into  us. 

Then  there  is  another  thing  that  people  are 
always  thinking,  that  I  hear  very  often  from 
men,  and  that  I  have  no  doubt  that  I  should  hear 
from  many  of  you,  one  by  one.  You  talk  about 
your  earlier  religion  as  if  it  had  been  some  sort 
of  a  bondage  from  which  you  had  escaped.  How 
common  it  is  to  hear  men,  especially  in  this 
region,  say :  "  I  would  be,  perhaps,  religious,  ex- 
cept that  there  was  so  much  religion  forced  upon 
me  in  my  earliest  days.  I  was  driven  to  church 
when  I  was  a  boy,  in  those  old  Puritan  days. 
I  went  to  school,  where  they  forced  prayers  upon 


THE  CHRIST.  147 

me  all  the  time.  I  was  made  to  be  religious,  so 
now  I  cannot  be  religious."  Was  there  ever  a 
more  dreadful  thing  than  for  a  soul  to  say  that, 
because,  it  may  be,  of  the  unwisdom,  or  the 
imprudence,  the  overzeal  and  the  mistaken  zeal 
of  other  men,  we  have  not  got  the  full  blessing 
of  that  rich,  open,  free  life  with  Christ  which 
the  youth  may  have,  and  therefore  we  will  aban- 
don the  privileges  of  our  higher  life  which  is 
given  to  us  in  our  manlier  years?  It  all  comes 
of  this  awful  way  of  talking  as  if  religion  were 
the  duty  and  not  the  inestimable  privilege  of 
human  kind.  The  Christ  stands  before  us  and 
says,  "Come  to  me."  You  say,  "Must  I?" 
And  He  answers,  "  You  may."  He  will  not  even 
say,  "You  must."  You  may.  And  duty  loses 
itself  in  privilege,  and  the  soul  enters  into  inde- 
pendence and  escapes  from  its  sins,  fulfils  its 
life,  lays  hold  of  its  salvation,  becomes  eternal, 
begins  to  live  an  eternal  life  in  the  accepted  and 
loving  service  of  Christ. 

Now  just  one  word,  my  friends.  If  this  be  so, 
whether  you  to-day  are  ready  to  make  Christ 
your  master  and  your  friend  or  not,  do  not,  I 
beg  you,  let  yourselves  say  that  it  is  a  silly  or 
unreasonable  belief,  thus  to  know  of  a  spiritual 
presence  which  is  here  among  us,  in  which  God 
is  really  in  humanity.     Do  not  let  yourselves 


148  PEliFECT  FREEDOM. 

say,  my  friends,  that  the  man  who  gives  himsel% 
to  Jesus  Christ  and  earnestly  tries  to  enter  in 
deeper  and  deeper  into  his  life  and  tries  to  do 
his  will,  that  he  may  know  the  Christ  and  know 
himself  in  the  Christ  more  and  more  —  dare  not 
call  that  brother  a  fool,  as  you  have  sometimes 
called  your  Christian  man  who  watched  scrupu- 
lously over  his  life  and  prayed,  yes,  prayed,  the 
thing  you  think  perhaps  the  f oolishest  thing  that 
man  can  do,  the  thing  that  is  the  most  reasonable 
act  that  any  man  does  upon  God's  earth.  If 
man  is  man  and  God  is  God,  to  live  without 
prayer  is  not  merely  an  awful  thing:  it  is  an 
infinitely  foolish  thing.  When  a  man  for  the 
first  time  bows  down  upon  his  knees  and  prays, 
"Oh!  Christ,  come  unto  me,  reveal  Thyself  to 
me,  make  me  to  know  Thee,  that  I  may  receive 
Thee,  make  me  to  be  obedient  that  I  may  take 
Thee  into  my  life,"  then  that  man  has  claimed 
his  manhood.  I  beg  you,  I  implore  you,  I  adjure 
you  that,  if  you  be  not  ready  to  be  Christian, 
you  at  least  will  know  that  the  Christian  life  is 
the  only  true  human  life,  and  that  the  man  who 
becomes  thoroughly  a  Christian  sets  his  face 
toward  the  fulfilment  of  his  humanity,  and  so 
for  the  first  time  truly  is  a  man.  "As  many 
as  received  Him,"  —  so  the  great  Scripture  word 
runs  of  this  Christ  of  whom  we  have  been  talk- 


THE  CHBIST.  149 

ing,  —  "As  many  as  received  Him,  to  them  gave 
He  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God." 

Just  think  of  it !  —  the  sons  of  God !  The 
power  to  become  that  to  as  many  as  will  receive 
the  present  Christ. 


*     /*" 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.^ 


"He  chose  David  also  His  servant,  and  took  him  away 
from  the  sheepfolds ;  that  he  might  feed  3raeob  His  people, 
and  Israel  His  inheritance.  So  he  fed  them  with  a  faith- 
ful and  true  heart,  and  ruled  them  prudently  with  all  his 
power."— Psalm  lxxviii.  71,  72,  73. 

While  I  speak  to  you  to-day,  the  body  of  the 
President  who  ruled  this  people,  is  lying,  hon- 
ored and  loved,  in  our  city.  It  is  impossible 
with  that  sacred  presence  in  our  midst  for  me  to 
stand  and  speak  of  ordinary  topics  which  oc- 
cupy the  pulpit.  I  must  speak  of  him  to-day; 
and  I  therefore  undertake  to  do  what  I  had 
intended  to  do  at  some  future  time,  to  invite 
you  to  study  with  me  the  character  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  the  impulses  of  his  life  and  the  causes 
of  his  death.  I  know  how  hard  it  is  to  do  it 
rightly,  how  impossible  it  is  to  do  it  worthily. 
But  I  shall  speak  with  confidence,  because  I 
speak  to  those  who  love  him,  and  whose  ready 
love  will  fill  out  the  deficiencies  in  a  picture 
which  my  words  will  weakly  try  to  draw. 

1  A  sermon  preached  in  Philadelphia,  while  the  body  of 
the  President  was  lying  in  the  city. 
151 


152  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

We  take  it  for  granted,  first  of  all,  that  there 
is  an  essential  connection  between  Mr.  Lincoln's 
character  and  his  violent  and  bloody  death.  It 
is  no  accident,  no  arbitrary  decree  of  Providence. 
He  lived  as  he  did,  and  he  died  as  he  did,  be- 
cause he  was  what  he  was.  The  more  we  see  of 
events,  the  less  we  come  to  believe  in  any  fate 
or  destiny  except  the  destiny  of  character.  It 
will  be  our  duty,  then,  to  see  what  there  was  in 
the  character  of  our  great  President  that  created 
the  history  of  his  life,  and  at  last  produced  the 
catastrophe  of  his  cruel  death.  After  the  first 
trembling  horror,  the  first  outburst  of  indignant 
sorrow,  has  grown  calm,  these  are  the  questions 
which  we  are  bound  to  ask  and  answer. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  even  to  sketch  the 
biography  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  He  was  born  in 
Kentucky,  fifty-six  years  ago,  when  Kentucky 
was  a  pioneer  State.  He  lived,  as  boy  and  man, 
the  hard  and  needy  life  of  a  backwoodsman,  a 
farmer,  a  river  boatman,  and,  finally,  by  his 
own  efforts  at  self-education,  of  an  active,  re- 
spected, influential  citizen,  in  the  half -organized 
and  manifold  interests  of  a  new  and  energetic 
community.  Prom  his  boyhood  up  he  lived  in 
direct  and  vigorous  contact  with  men  and  things, 
not  as  in  older  States  and  easier  conditions  with 
words  and  theories ;  and  both  his  moral  convic- 


ABBAHAM  LINCOLN.  153 

tions  and  his  intellectual  opinions  gathered  from 
that  contact  a  supreme  degree  of  that  character 
by  which  men  knew  him,  that  character  which 
is  the  most  distinctive  possession  of  the  best 
American  nature,  that  almost  indescribable 
quality  which  we  call  in  general  clearness  or 
^truth^nd  which  appears  in  the  physical  struct- 
ure as  health,  in  the  moral  constitution  as  hon- 
esty, in  the  mental  structure  as  sagacity,  and  in 
the  xegioia^pf  active  life  as  practicalness.  This 
one  character,  with  many  sides,  all  shaped  by 
the  same  essential  force  and  testifying  to  the 
same  inner  influences,  was  what  was  powerful 
in  him  and  decreed  for  him  the  life  he  was  to 
live  and  the  death  he  was  to  die.  We  must 
take  no  smaller  view  than  this  of  what  he  was. 
Even  his  physical  conditions  are  not  to  be  for- 
gotten in  making  up  his  character.  We  make 
too  little  always  of  the  physical;  certainly  we 
make  too  little  of  it  here  if  we  lose  out  of  sight 
the  strength  and  muscular  activity,  the  power 
of  doing  and  enduring,  which  the  backwoods- 
boy  inherited  from  generations  of  hard-living 
ancestors,  and  appropriated  for  his  own  by  a 
long  discipline  of  bodily  toil.  He  brought  to 
the  solution  of  the  question  of  labor  in  this  coun- 
try not  merely  a  mind,  but  a  body  thoroughly  in 
sympathy  with  labor,  full  of  the  culture  of  labor, 


154  PEBFECT  FREEDOM, 

bearing  witness  to  the  dignity  and  excellence  of 
work  in  every  muscle  that  work  had  toughened 
and  every  sense  that  work  had  made  clear  and 
true.  He  could  not  have  brought  the  mind  for 
his  task  so  perfectly,  unless  he  had  first  brought 
the  body  whose  rugged  and  stubborn  health  was 
always  contradicting  to  him  the  false  theories 
of  labor,  and  always  asserting  the  true. 

As  to  the  moral  and  mental  powers  which  dis- 
tinguished him,  all  embraceable  under  this  gen- 
eral description  of  clearness  of  truth,  the  most 
remarkable  thing  is  the  way  in  which  they  blf^pd. 
with  one  another^  so  that  it  is  next  to  impossi- 
ble to  examine  them^  In  separajlon.^  A  great 
many  people  have  discussed  very  crudely 
whether  Abraham  Lincoln  was  an  intellectual 
man  or  not ;  as  if  intellect  were  a  thing  always 
of  the  same  sort,  which  you  could  precipitate 
from  the  other  constituents  of  a  man's  nature 
and  weigh  by  itself,  and  compare  by  pounds 
and  ounces  in  this  man  with  another.  The  fact 
is,  that  in  all  the  simplest  characters  the  line 
between  the  mental  and  moral  natures  is  always 
vague  and  indistinct.  They  run  together,  and 
in  their  best  combinations  you  are  unable  to  dis- 
criminate, in  the  wisdom  which  is  their  result, 
how  much  is  moral  and  how  much  is  intellect- 
ual.    You  are  unable  to  tell  whether  in  the  wise 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  155 

acts  and  words  which  issue  from  such  a  life 
there  is  more  of  the  righteousness  that  comes  of 
a  clear  conscience,  or  of  the  sagacity  that  comes 
of  a  clear  brain.  In  more  complex  characters 
and  under  more  complex  conditions,  the  moral 
and  the  mental  lives  come  to  be  less  healthily 
combined.  They  co-operate,  they  help  each 
other  less.  They  come  even  to  stand  over 
against  each  other  as  antagonists ;  till  we  have 
that  vague  but  most  melancholy  notion  which 
pervades  the  life  of  all  elaborate  civilization, 
that  goodness  and  greatness,  as  we  call  them, 
are  not  to  be  looked  for  together,  till  we  expect 
to  see  and  so  do  see  a  feeble  and  narrow  con- 
scientiousness on  the  one  hand,  and  a  bad,  un- 
principled intelligence  on  the  other,  dividing 
the  suffrages  of  men. 

It  is  the  great  boon  of  such  characters  as  Mr. 
Lincoln's,  that  they  reunite  what  God  has  joined 
together  and  man  has  put  asunder.  In  him  was 
vindicated  the  greatness  of  real  goodness  and  the 
goodness  of  real  greatness.  The  twain  were 
^£2.,fl£sh^  ^ot  one  of  all  the  multitudes  who 
stood  and  looked  up  to  him  for  direction  with 
such  a  loving  and  implicit  trust  can  tell  you 
to-day  whether  the  wise  judgments  that  he  gave 
came  most  from  a  strong  head  or  a  sound  heart. 
If  you  ask  them,  they  are  puzzled.     There  are 


156  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

men  as  good  as  he,  but  they  do  bad  things. 
There  are  men  as  intelligent  as  he,  but  they  do 
foolish  things.  In  him  goodness  and  intelli- 
gence combined  and  made  their  best  result  of 
wisdom.  FqrjDerfect  truth  consists  not  merely 
in  the  right^JCQnstituen^^  of  character,  but  in 
their  right  and  intimate  conjunction.  This 
union  of  the  mental  and  moral  into  a  life  of  ad- 
mirable simplicity  is  what  we  most  admire  in 
children;  but  in  them  it  is  unsettled  and  unprac- 
tical. But  when  it  is  preserved  into  manhood, 
deepened  into  reliability  and  maturity,  it  is  that 
glorified  childlikeness,  that  high  and  reverend 
simplicity,  which  shames  and  baffles  the  most 
accomplished  astuteness,  and  is  chosen  by  God 
to  fill  his  purposes  when  he  needs  a  ruler  for 
his  people,  of  faithful  and  true  heart,  such  as  he 
had  who  was  our  President. 

Another  evident  quality  of  such  a  character 
as  this  will  be  its  freshness  or  newness ;  if  we 
may  so  speak.  Its  freshness  or  readiness  —  call 
it  what  you  will  —  its  ability  to  take  up  new 
duties  and  do  them  in  a  new  way,  will  result  of 
necessity  from,  its  truth  and  clearness.  The 
simple  natures  and  forces  will  always  be  the 
most  pliant  ones.  Water  bends  and  shapes  it- 
self to  any  channel.  Air  folds  and  adapts  itself 
to  each  new  figure.     They  are  the  simplest  and 


ABBAHAM  LINCOLN.  157 

the  most  infinitely  active  things  in  nature.     So 
this   nature,  in   very  virtue   of   its   simplicity, 
must  be  also  free,  always  fitting  itself  to  each 
new  need.     It  will  always  start  from  the*  most 
fundamental  and  eternal  conditions,  and  work  in 
the  straightest  even  although  they  be  the  newest 
ways,  to  the  present  prescribed   purpose.     In  | 
one  word,  it  must  be  broad  and  independent  and  / 
radical.     So  that  freedom  and  radicalness  in  the  / 
character  of  Abraham  Lincoln  were  not  separate/ 
qualities,  but  the  necessary  results  of  his  sim-/ 
plicity  and  childlikeness  and  truth.  f 

Here  then  we  have  some  conception  of  the 
man;  Out  of  this  character  came  the  life  which 
we  admire  and  the  death  which  we  lament  to- 
day. He  was  called  in  that  character  to  that 
life  and  death.  It  was  just  the  nature,  as  you 
see,  which  a  new  nation  such  as  ours  ought  to 
produce.  All  the  conditions  of  his  birth,  his 
youth,  his  manhood,  which  made  him  what  he 
was,  were  not  irregular  and  exceptional,  but 
were  the  normal  conditions  of  a  new  and  simple 
country.  His  pioneer  home  in  Indiana  was  a 
type  of  the  pioneer  land  in  which  he  lived.  If 
ever  there  was  a  man  who  was  a  part  of  the 
time  and  country  he  lived  in,  this  was  he.  The 
same  simple  respect  for  labor  won  in  the  school 
of  work  and  incorporated  into  blood  and  muscle  j 


158  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

the  same  unassuming  loyalty  to  the  simple  virt- 
ues of  temperance  and  industry  and  integrity; 
the  same  sagacious  judgment  which  had  learned 
to  be  quick-eyed  and  quick-brained  in  the  con- 
stant presence  of  emergency;  the  same  direct 
and  clear  thought  about  things,  social,  political, 
and  religious,  that  was  in  him  supremely,  was 
in  the  people  he  was  sent  to  rule.  Surely,  with 
such  a  type-man  for  ruler,  there  would  seem  to 
be  but  a  smooth  and  even  road  over  which  he 
might  lead  the  people  whose  character  he  repre- 
sented into  the  new  region  of  national  happiness 
and  comfort  and  usefulness,  for  which  that  char- 
acter had  been  designed. 

But  then  we  come  to  the  beginning  of  all 
trouble.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  the  type-man 
the  country,  but  not  of  the  whole  country. 
This  cKaracter  which  we  have  been  trying  to 
describe  was  the  character  of  an  American  under 
the  discipline  of  freedom.  There  was  another 
American  character  which  had  been  developed 
under  the  influence  of  slavery.  There  was  no 
one  American  character  embracing  the  land. 
There  were  two  characters,  with  impulses  of 
irrepressible  and  deadly  conflict.  This  citizen 
whom  we  have  been  honoring  and  praising  rep- 
resented one.  The  whole  great  scheme  with 
which  he  was  ultimately  brought  in  conflict,  and 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  159 

which  has  finally  killed  him,  represented  the  ^ 
other.  Beside  this  nature,  true  and  fresh  and 
new,  there  was  another  nature,  false  and  effete 
and  old.  The  one  nature  found  itself  in  a  new 
world,  and  set  itself  to  discover  the  new  ways 
for  the  new  duties  that  were  given  it.  The 
other  nature,  full  of  the  false  pride  of  blood, 
set  itself  to  reproduce  in  a  new  world  the  insti- 
tutions and  the  spirit  of  the  old,  to  build  anew 
the  structure  of  the  feudalism  which  had  been 
corrupt  in  its  own  day,  and  which  had  been  left 
far  behind  by  the  advancing  conscience  and 
needs  of  the  progressing  race.  The  one  nature 
magnified  labor,  the  other  nature  depreciated 
and  despised  it.  The  one  honored  the  laborer, 
and  the  other  scorned  him.  The  one  was  sim- 
ple and  direct ;  the  other,  complex,  full  of  soph- 
istries and  self -excuses.  The  one  was  free  to 
look  all  that  claimed  to  be  truth  in  the  face, 
and  separate  the  error  from  the  truth  that  might 
be  in  it;  the  other  did  not  dare  to  investigate, 
because  its  own  established  prides  and  systems 
were  dearer  to  it  than  the  truth  itself,  and  so 
even  truth  went  about  in  it  doing  the-  work  of 
error.  The  one  was  ready  to  state  broad  princi- 
ples, of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  the  universal 
fatherhood  and  justice  of  God,  however  imper- 
fectly it  might  realize  them   in   practice;  the 


160  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

other  denied  even  the  principles,  and  so  dug 
deep  and  laid  below  its  special  sins  the  broad 
foundation  of  a  consistent,  acknowledged  sinful- 
ness. In  a  word,  one  nature  was  full  of  the 
influences  of  Freedom,  the  other  nature  ^/as  full 
of  the  influences  of  Slavery. 

In  general,  these  two  regions  of  our  national 
life  were  separated  by  a  geographical  boundary. 
One  was  the  spirit  of  the  North,  the  other  was 
the  spirit  of  the  South.  But  the  Southern  nat- 
ure was  by  no  means  all  a  Southern  thing.  There 
it  had  an  organized,  established  form,  a  -^.ertain 
definite,  established  institution  about  w  ich  it 
clustered.  Here,  lacking  advantage,  it  lived  in 
less  expressive  ways  and  so  lived  more  weakly. 
There,  there  was  the  horrible  sacrament  of  slav- 
ery, the  outward  and  visible  sign  round  which 
the  inward  and  spiritual  temper  gathered  and 
kept  itself  alive.  But  who  doubts  that  among 
us  the  spirit  of  slavery  lived  and  thrived?  Its 
formal  existence  had  been  swept  away  from  one 
State  after  another,  partly  on  conscientious, 
partly  on  economical  grounds,  but  its  spirit  was 
here,  in  •every  sympathy  that  Northern  winds 
carried  to  the  listening  ear  of  the  Southern  slave- 
holder, and  in  every  oppression  of  the  weak  by 
the  strong,  every  proud  assumption  of  idleness 
over  labor  which  echoed  the  music  of  Southern 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  161 

life  back  to  us.  Here  in  our  midst  lived  that 
worse  and  falser  nature,  side  by  side  with  the 
true  and  better  nature  which  God  meant  should 
be  the  nature  of  Americans,  and  of  which  he 
was  shaping  out  the  type  and  champion  in  his 
chosen  David  of  the  sheepfold. 

Here  then  we  have  the  two.  The  history  of 
our  country  for  many  years  is  the  history  of  how 
these  two  elements  of  American  life  approached 
collision.  They  wrought  their  separate  reac- 
tions 0  1  each  other.  Men  debate  and  quarrel 
even  uqw  about  the  rise  of  Northern  Abolition- 
ism, aliTiut  whether  the  Northern  Abolitionists 
were  right  or  wrong,  whether  they  did  harm  or 
good.  How  vain  the  quarrel  is !  It  was  inevi- 
table. It  was  inevitable  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  two  such  natures  living  here  together  should 
be  set  violently  against  each  other.  It  is  inevi- 
table, till  man  be  far  more  unfeeling  and  untrue 
to  his  convictions  than  he  has  always  been,  that 
a  great  wrong  asserting  itself  vehemently  should 
arouse  to  no  less  vehement  assertion  the  oppos- 
ing right.  The  only  wonder  is  that  there  was 
not  more  of  it.  The  only  wonder  is  that  so  few 
were  swept  away  to  take  by  an  impulse  they 
could  not  resist  their  stand  of  hatred  to  the 
wicked  institution.  The  only  wonder  is,  that 
Cipnlj  one  brave,  reckless  man  came  forth  to  cast 


162  PEBFECT  FBEEDOM. 

himself,  almost  single-handed,  with  a  hopeless 
hope,  against  the  proud  power  that  he  hated, 
and  trust  to  the  influence  of  a  soul  marching  on 
into  the  history  of  his  countrymen  to  stir  them 
to  a  vindication  of  the  truth  he  loved.  At  any 
rate,  whether  the  Abolitionists  were  wrong  or 
right,  there  grew  up  about  their  violence,  as 
there  always  will  about  the  extremism  of  ex- 
treme reformers,  a  great  mass  of  feeling,  catch- 
ing their  spirit  and  asserting  it  firmly,  though 
in  more  moderate  degrees  and  methods.  About 
the  nucleus  of  Abolitionism  grew  up  a  great 
American  Anti-Slavery  determination,  which 
at  last  gathered  strength  enough  to  take  its 
stand  to  insist  upon  the  checking  and  limiting 
the  extension  of  the  power  of  slavery,  and  to 
put  the  type-man,  whom  God  had  been  prepar- 
ing for  the  task,  before  the  world,  to  do  the 
work  on  which  it  had  resolved.  Then  came 
discontent,  secession,  treason.  The  two  Ameri- 
can natures,  long  advancing  to  encounter,  met  at 
last,  and  a  whole  country,  yet  trembling  with 
the  shock,  bears  witness  how  terrible  the  meet- 
ing was. 

Thus  I  have  tried  briefly  to  trace  out  the 
gradual  course  by  which  God  brought  the  char- 
acter which  he  designed  to  be  the  controlling 
character  of  this  new  world  into  distinct  colli- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  163 

sion  with  thejig^tile  character  which  it  was  to 
destroy  andfabsorVJand  set  it  in  the  person  of 
its  type-marTin  the  seat  of  highest  power.  The 
character  formed  under  the  discipline  of  Free- 
dom and  the  character  formed  under  the  disci- 
pline of  Slavery  developed  all  their  difference 
and  met  in  hostile  conflict  when  this  war  began. 
Notice,  it  was  not  only  in  what  he  did  and  was 
towards  the  slave,  it  was  in  all  he  did  and  was 
everywhere  that  we  accept  Mr.  Lincoln's  char- 
acter as  the  true  result  of  our  free  life  and  in- 
stitutions. Nowhere  else  could  have  come  forth 
that  genuine  love  of  the  people,  which  in  him 
no  one  could  suspect  of  being  either  the  cheap 
flattery  of  the  demagogue  or  the  abstract  philan- 
thropy of  the  philosopher,  which  made  our 
President,  while  he  lived,  the  centre  of  a  great 
household  land,  and  when  he  died  so  cruelly, 
made  every  humblest  household  thrill  with  a 
sense  of  personal  bereavement  which  the  death 
of  rulers  is  not  apt  to  bring.  Nowhere  else  than 
out  of  the  life  of  freedom  could  have  come  that 
personal  unselfishness  and  generosity  which 
made  so  gracious  a  part  of  this  good  man's 
character.  How  many  soldiers  feel  yet  the 
pressure  of  a  strong  hand  that  clasped  theirs 
once  as  they  lay  sick  and  weak  in  the  dreary 
hospital !     How  many  ears  will  never  lose  the 


164  PEHFECT  FREEDOM. 

tlirill  of  some  kind  word  he  spoke  —  he  who 
could  speak  so  kindly  to  promise  a  kindness 
that  always  matched  his  word!  How  often  he 
surprised  the  land  with  a  clemency  which  made 
even  those  who  questioned  his  policy  love  him 
the  more  for  what  they  called  his  weakness, — 
seeing  how  the  man  in  whom  God  had  most 
embodied  the  discipline  of  Freedom  not  only 
could  not  be  a  slave,  but  could  not  be  a  tyrant ! 
In  the  heartiness  of  his  mirth  and  his  enjoyment 
of  simple  joys;  in  the  directness  and  shrewd- 
ness of  perception  which  constituted  his  wit ;  in 
the  untired,  undiscouraged  faith  in  human  nat- 
ure which  he  always  kept;  and  perhaps  above 
all  in  the  plainness  and  quiet,  unostentatious 
earnestness  and  independence  of  his  religious 
life,  in  his  humble  love  and  trust  of  God  —  in 
all,  it  was  a  character  such  as  only  Freedom 
knows  how  to  make. 

Now  it  was  in  this  character,  rather  than  in 
any  mere  political  position,  that  the  fitness  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  to  stand  forth  in  the  struggle  of 
the  two  American  natures  really  lay.  We  are 
told  that  he  did  not  come  to  the  Presidential 
chair  pledged  to  the  abolition  of  Slavery.  When 
will  we  learn  that  with  all  true  men  it  is  not 
what  they  intend  to  do,  but  it  is  what  the  quali- 
ties of  their  natures  bind  them  to  do,  that  deter- 


ABBAHAM  LINCOLN,  165 

mines  their  career !  The  President  came  to  his 
XDOwer  full  of  the  bloody  strong  in  the  strength 
•of  Freedom.  He  came  there  free,  and  hating 
slavery.  He  came  there,  leaving  on  record 
words  like  these  spoken  three  years  before  and 
never  contradicted.  He  had  said,  "A  house 
divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.  I  believe 
this  Government  cannot  endure  permanently, 
half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the 
Union  to  be  dissolved;  I  do  not  expect  the 
house  to  fall;  but  I  expect  it  will  cease  to  be 
divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all  the 
other."  When  the  question  came,  he  knew 
which  thing  he  meant  that  it  should  be.  His 
whole  nature  settled  that  question  for  him. 
Such  a  man  must  always  live  as  he  used  to  say 
he  lived  (and  was  blamed  for  saying  it)  "con- 
trolled by  events,  not  controlling  them."  And 
with  a  reverent  and  clear  mind,  to  be  controlled 
by  events  means  to  be  controlled  by  God.  For 
such  a  man  there  was  no  hesitation  when  God 
brought  him  up  face  to  face  with  Slavery  and 
put  the  sword  into  his  hand  and  said,  "  Strike 
it  down  dead."  He  was  a  willing  servant  then. 
If  ever  the  face  of  a  man  writing  solemn  words 
glowed  with  a  solemn  joy,  it  must  have  been  the 
face  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  as  he  bent  over  the 
page  where  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  of 


166  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

1863  was  growing  into  shape,  and  giving  nian- 
Jiood  and  freedom  as  he  wrote  it  to  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  his  fellow-men.  Here  was  a  work 
in  which  his  whole  nature  could  rejoice.  Here 
was  an  act  that  crowned  the  whole  culture  of  his 
life.  All  the  past,  the  free  boyhood  in  the 
woods,  the  free  youth  upon  the  farm,  the  free 
manhood  in  the  honorable  citizen's  employ- 
ments —  all  his  freedom  gathered  and  completed 
itself  in  this.  And  as  the  swarthy  multitudes 
came  in,  ragged,  and  tired,  and  hungry,  and 
ignorant,  but  free  forever  from  anything  but 
the  memorial  scars  of  the  fetters  and  the  whip, 
singing  rude  songs  in  which  the  new  triumph  of 
freedom  struggled  and  heaved  below  the  sad 
melody  that  had  been  shaped  for  bondage;  as 
in  their  camps  and  hovels  there  grew  up  to  their 
half-superstitious  eyes  the  image  of  a  great 
Father  almost  more  than  man,  to  whom  they 
owed  their  freedom, —  were  they  not  half  right? 
For  it  was  not  to  one  man,  driven  by  stress  of 
policy,  or  swept  off  by  a  whim  of  pity,  that  the 
noble  act  was  due.  It  was  to  the  American 
\  nature,  long  kept  by  God  in  his  own  intentions 
l\  till  his  time  should  come,  at  last  emerging  into 
\  sight  and  power,  and  bound  up  and  embodied  in 
jthis  best  and  most  American  of  all  Americans, 
CO  whom  we  and  those^poor  frightened  slaves' al" 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  167 

last  might  look  up  together  and  love  to  call  him, 
with  one  voice,  our  Eather. 

Thus,  we  have  seen  something  of  what  the 
character  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was,  and  how  it  issued 
in  the  life  he  lived.  It  remains  for  us  to  see 
how  it  resulted  also  in  the  terrible  death  which 
has  laid  his  murdered  body  here  in  our  town 
among  lamenting  multitudes  to-day.  It  is  not 
a  hard  question,  though  it  is  sad  to  answer.  We 
saw  the  two  natures,  the  nature  of  Slavery  and 
the  ■  nature  of  Freedom,  at  last  set  against  each 
other,  come  at  last  to  open  war.  Both  fought, 
fought  long,  fought  bravely;  but  each,  as  was 
perfectly  natural,  fought  with  the  tools  and  in 
the  ways  which  its  own  character  had  made 
familiar  to  it.  The  character  of  Slavery  was 
brutal,  barbarous,  and  treacherous;  and  so  the 
whole  history  of  the  slave  power  during  the  war 
has  been  full  of  ways  of  warfare  brutal,  barbar- 
ous, and  treacherous,  beyond  anything  that  men 
bred  in  freedom  could  have  been  driven  to  by 
the  most  hateful  passions.  It  is  not  to  be  mar- 
velled at.  It  is  not  to  be  set  down  as  the  special 
sin  of  the  war.  It  goes  back  beyond  that.  It 
is  the  sin  of  the  system.  It  is  the  barbarism  of 
Slavery.  When  Slavery  went  to  war  to  save  its 
life,  what  wonder  if  its  barbarism  grew  barbar- 
ous a  hundredfold ! 


168  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

One  would  be  attempting  a  task  which  once 
was  ahnost  hopeless,  but  which  now  is  only 
needless,  if  he  set  himself  to  convince  a  North- 
ern congregation  that  Slavery  was  a  barbarian 
institution.  It  would  he,  hardly  more  necessary 
to  try  to  prove  how  its  barbarism  has  shown 
itself  during  this  war.  The  same  spirit  which 
was  blind  to  the  wickedness  of  breaking  sacred 
ties,  of  separating  man  and  wife,  of  beating 
women  till  they  dropped  down  dead,  of  organiz- 
ing licentiousness  and  sin  into  commercial  sys- 
tems, of  forbidding  knowledge  and  protecting 
itself  with  ignorance,  of  putting  on  its  arms  and 
riding  out  to  steal  a  State  at  the  beleaguered 
ballot-box  away  from  freedom  —  in  one  word 
(for  its  simplest  definition  is  its  worst  dishonor), 
the  spirit  that  gave  man  the  ownership  in  man 
in  time  of  peace,  has  found  out  yet  more  terri- 
ble barbarisms  for  the  time  of  war.  It  has 
hewed  and  burned  the  bodies  of  the  dead.  It 
has  starved  and  mutilated  its  helpless  prisoners. 
It  has  dealt  by  truth,  not  as  men  will  in  a  time 
of  excitement,  lightly  and  with  frequent  viola- 
tions, but  with  a  cool,  and  deliberate,  and  sys- 
tematic contempt.  It  has  sent  its  agents  into 
Northern  towns  to  fire  peaceful  hotels  where 
hundreds  of  peaceful  men  and  women  slept.  It 
has  undermined  the  prisons  where  its  victims 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  169 

starved,  and  made  all  ready  to  blow  with  one 
blast  their  wretched  life  away.  It  has  delighted 
in  the  lowest  and  basest  scurrility  even  on  the 
highest  and  most  honorable  lips.  It  has  cor- 
rupted the  graciousness  of  women  and  killed 
out  the  truth  of  men. 

I  do  not  count  up  the  terrible  catalogue  be- 
cause I  like  to,  nor  because  I  wish  to  stir  your 
hearts  to  passion.  Even  now,  you  and  I  have 
•no  right  to  indulge  in  personal  hatred  to  the 
men  who  did  these  things.  But  we  are  not 
doing  right  by  ourselves,  by  the  President  that 
we  have  lost,  or  by  God  who  had  a  purpose  in 
our  losing  him,  unless  we  know  thoroughly  that 
it  was  this  same  spirit  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  a  tyrant  in  peace  and  a  savage  in  war,  that 
has  crowned  itself  with  the  working  of  this  final 
woe.  It  was  the  conflict  of  the  two  American 
natures,  the  false  and  the  true.  It  was  Slavery 
and  Freedom  that  met  in  their  two  representa- 
tives, the  assassin  and  the  President;  and  the 
victim  of  the  last  desperate  struggle  of  the  dying 
Slavery  lies  dead  to-day  in  Independence  Hall. 

Solemnly,  in  the  sight  of  God,  I  charge  this 
murder  where  it  belongs,  on  Slavery.  I  dare 
not  stand  here  in  His  sight,  and  before  Him  or 
you  speak  doubtful  and  double-meaning  words 
of  vague  repentance,  as  if  we  had  killed  our 


170  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

President.  We  have  sins  enough,  but  we  have 
not  done  this  sin,  save  as  by  weak  concessions 
and  timid  compromises  we  have  let  the  spirit  of 
Slavery  grow  strong  and  ripe  for  such  a  deed. 
In  the  barbarism  of  Slavery  the  foul  act  and  its 
foul  method  had  their  birth.  By  all  the  good- 
ness that  there  was  in  him;  by  all  the  love  we 
had  for  him  (and  who  shall  tell  how  great  it 
was) ;  by  all  the  sorrow  that  has  burdened  down 
this  desolate  and  dreadful  week, —  I  charge  this 
murder  where  it  belongs,  on  Slavery.  I  bid 
you  to  remember  where  the  charge  belongs,  to 
write  it  on  the  door-posts  of  your  mourning 
houses,  to  teach  it  to  your  wondering  children, 
to  give  it  to  the  history  of  these  times,  that  all 
times  to  come  may  hate  and  dread  the  sin  that 
killed  our  noblest  President. 

If  ever  anything  were  clear,  this  is  the  clear- 
est. Is  there  the  man  alive  who  thinks  that 
Abraham.  Lincoln  was  shot  just  for  himself; 
that  it  was  that  one  man  for  whom  the  plot  was 
laid?  The  gentlest,  kindest,  most  indulgent 
man  that  ever  ruled  a  State !  The  man  who  knew 
not  how  to  speak  a  word  of  harshness  or  how  to 
make  a  foe !  Was  it  he  for  whom  the  murderer 
lurked  with  a  mere  private  hate?  It  was  not 
he,  t)ut  what  he  stood  for.  It  was  Law  and  Lib- 
erty, it  was  Government  and  Freedom,  against 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  171 

which  the  hate  gathered  and  the  treacherous 
shot  was  fired.  And  I  know  not  how  the  crime 
of  him  who  shoots  at  Law  and  Liberty  in  the 
crowded  glare  of  a  great  theatre  differs  from 
theirs  who  have  levelled  their  aim  at  the  same 
great  beings  from  behind  a  thousand  ambuscades 
and  on  a  hundred  battle-fields  of  this  long  war. 
Every  general  in  the  field,  and  every  false  citi- 
zen in  our  midst  at  home,  who  has  plotted  and 
labored  to  destroy  the  lives  of  the  soldiers  of  the 
Kepublic,  is  brother  to  him  who  did  this  deed. 
The  American  nature,  the  American  truths,  of 
which  our  President  was  the  anointed  and  su- 
preme embodiment,  have  been  embodied  in  mul- 
titudes of  heroes  who  marched  unknown  and  fell 
unnoticed  in  our  ranks.  For  them,  just  as  for 
him,  character  decreed  a  life  and  a  death.  The 
blood  of  all  of  them  I  charge  on  the  same  head. 
Slavery  armed  with  Treason  was  their  murderer. 
Men  point  out  to  us  the  absurdity  and  folly  of 
this  awful  crime.  Again  and  again  we  hear 
men  say,  *'  It  was  the  worst  thing  for  themselves 
they  could  have  done.  They  have  shot  a  repre- 
sentative man,  and  the  cause  he  represented 
grows  stronger  and  sterner  by  his  death.  Can  it 
be  that  so  wise  a  devil  was  so  foolish  here? 
Must  it  not  have  been  the  act  of  one  poor  mad- 
man, born  and  nursed  in  his  own  reckless  brain? '' 


172  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

My  friends,  let  us  understand  this  matter.  It 
was  a  foolish  act.  Its  folly  was  only  equalled 
by  its  wickedness.  It  was  a  foolish  act.  But 
when  did  sin  begin  to  be  wise?  When  did 
wickedness  learn  wisdom?  When  did  the  fool 
stop  saying  in  his  heart,  "There  is  no  God/' 
and  acting  godlessly  in  the  absurdity  of  his  im- 
piety? The  cause  that  Abraham  Lincoln  died 
for  shall  grow  stronger  by  his  death, —  stronger 
and  sterner.  Stronger  to  set  its  pillars  deep  into 
the  structure  of  our  nation's  life;  sterner  to 
execute  the  justice  of  the  Lord  upon  his  ene- 
mies. Stronger  to  spread  its  arms  and  grasp 
our  whole  land  into  freedom;  sterner  to  sweep 
the  last  poor  ghost  of  Slavery  out  of  our  haunted 
homes.  But  while  we  feel  the  folly  of  this  act, 
let  not  its  folly  hide  its  wickedness.  It  was 
the  wickedness  of  Slavery  putting  on  a  foolish- 
ness for  which  its  wickedness  and  that  alone  is 
responsible,  that  robbed  the  nation  of  a  Presi- 
dent and  the  peoplf^  nf  ?^-  father .  And  remember 
this,  that  the  folly  of  the  Slave  power  in  strik- 
ing the  representative  of  Freedom,  and  thinking 
that  thereby  it  killed  Freedom  itself,  is  only  a 
folly  that  we  shall  echo  if  we  dare  to  think  that 
in  punishing  the  representatives  of  Slavery  who 
did  this  deed,  we  are  putting  Slavery  to  death. 
Dispersing  armies  and  hanging  traitors,  impera- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  173 

tively  as  justice  and  necessity  may  demand  them 
both,  are  not  killing  the  spirit  out  of  which 
they  sprang.  The  traitor  must  die  because  he 
has  committed  treason.  The  murderer  must 
die  because  he  has  committed  murder.  Slavery 
must  die,  because  out  of  it,  and  it  alone,  came 
forth  the  treason  of  the  traitor  and  the  murder 
of  the  murderer.  Do  not  say  that  it  is  dead. 
It  is  not,  while  its  essential  spirit  lives.  While 
one  man  counts  another  man  his  born  inferior 
for  the  color  of  his  skin,  while  both  in  North 
and  South  prejudices  and  practices,  which  the 
law  cannot  touch,  but  which  God  hates,  keep 
alive  in  our  people's  hearts  the  spirit  of  the  old 
iniquity,  it  is  not  dead.  The  new  American 
nature  must  supplant  the  old.  We  must  grow 
like  our  President,  in  his  truth,  his  indepen- 
dence, his  religion,  and  his  wide  humanity. 
Then  the  character  by  which  he  died  shall  be  in 
us,  and  by  it  we  shall  live.  Then  peace  shall 
come  that  knows  no  war,  and  law  that  knows  no 
treason;  and  full  of  his  spirit  a  grateful  land 
shall  gather  round  his  grave,  and  in  the  daily 
psalm  of  prosperous  and  righteous  living,  thank 
God  forever  for  his  life  and  death. 

So  let  him  lie  here  in  our  midst  to-day,  and 
let  our  people  go  and  bend  with  solemn  thought- 
fulness  and  look  upon  his  face  and  read  the  les- 


174  PERFECT  FBEEDOM. 

sons  of  his  burial.  As  he  paused  here  on  his 
journey  from  the  Western  home  and  told  us  what 
by  the  help  of  God  he  meant  to  do,  so  let  him 
pause  upon  his  way  back  to  his  Western  grave 
and  tell  us  with  a  silence  more  eloquent  than 
words  how  bravely,  how  truly,  by  the  strength 
of  God,  he  did  it.  God  brought  him  up  as  he 
brought  David  up  from  the  sheepfolds  to  feed 
Jacob,  his  people,  and  Israel,  his  inheritance. 
He  came  up  in  earnestness  and  faith,  and  he 
goes  back  in  triumph.  As  he  pauses  here  to- 
day, and  from  his  cold  lips  bids  us  bear  witness 
how  he  has  met  the  duty  that  was  laid  on  him, 
what  can  we  say  out  of  our  full  hearts  but  this 
—  "  He  fed  them  with  a  faithful  and  true  heart, 
and  ruled  them  prudently  with  all  his  power." 
The  Shepherd  of  the  People  !  that  old  name  that 
the  best  rulers  ever  craved.  What  ruler  ever 
won  it  like  this  dead  President  of  ours?  He  fed 
us  faithfully  and  truly.  He  fed  us  with  coun- 
sel when  we  were  in  doubt,  with  inspiration 
when  we  sometimes  faltered,  with  caution  when 
we  would  be  rash,  with  calm,  clear,  trustful 
cheerfulness  through  many  an  hour  when  our 
hearts  were  dark.  He  fed  hungry  souls  all 
over  the  country  with  sympathy  and  consolation. 
He  spread  before  the  whole  land  feasts  of  great 
duty  and  devotion  and  patriotism,  on  which  the 


ABBAHAM  LINCOLN,  175 

land  grew  strong.  He  fed  us  with  solemn,  solid 
truths.  He  taught  us  the  sacredness  of  govern- 
ment, the  wickedness  of  treason.  He  made  our 
souls  glad  and  vigorous  with  the  love  of  liberty 
that  was  in  his.  He  showed  us  how  to  love 
truth  and  yet  be  charitable  —  how  to  hate  wrong 
and  all  oppression,  and  yet  not  treasure  one 
personal  injury  or  insult.  He  fed  all  his  people, 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  from  the  most 
privileged  down  to  the  most  enslaved.  Best  of 
all,  he  fed  us  with  a  reverent  and  genuine  relig- 
ion. He  spread  before  us  the  love  and  fear  of 
God  just  in  that  shape  in  which  we  need  them 
most,  and  out  of  his  faithful  service  of  a  higher 
Master  who  of  us  has  not  taken  and  eaten  and 
grown  strong?  "He  fed  them  with  a  faithful 
and  true  heart."  Yes,  till  the  last.  For  at  the 
last,  behold  him  standing  with  hand  reached  out 
to  feed  the  South  with  mercy  and  the  North  with 
charity,  and  the  whole  land  with  peace,  when 
the  Lord  who  had  sent  him  called  him  and  his 
work  was  done ! 

He  stood  once  on  the  battle-field  of  our  own 
State,  and  said  of  the  brave  men  who  had  saved 
it  words  as  noble  as  any  countryman  of  ours  ever 
spoke.  Let  us  stand  in  the  country  he  has 
saved,  and  which  is  to  be  his  grave  and  monu- 
ment, and  say  of  Abraham  Lincoln  what  he  said 


176  PERFECT  FREEDOM, 

of  the  soldiers  who  had  died  at  Gettysburg. 
He  stood  there  with  their  graves  before  him,, 
and  these  are  the  words  he  said : 

**  We  cannot  dedicate,  we  cannot  consecrate,  we  can- 
not hallow  this  ground.  The  brave  men  who  struggled 
here  have  consecrated  it  far  beyond  our  power  to  add  or 
detract.  The  world  will  little  note  nor  long  remember 
what  we  say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did 
here.  It  is  for  us  the  living  rather  to  be  dedicated  to 
the  unfinished  work  which  they  who  fought  here  have 
thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be 
here  dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining  before  us, 
that  from  these  honored  dead  we  take  increased  devotion 
to  that  cause  for  which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure 
of  devotion  ;  that  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead 
shall  not  have  died  in  vain ;  and  this  nation,  under  God, 
shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom,  and  that  government 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people  shall  not 
perish  from  the  earth." 

May  God  make  us  worthy  of  the  memory  of 
Abraham  Lincoln, 


14  DAY  USE 

RlilURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WfflCH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-340S 

This  book  is  due  on  die  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

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PEC'DLD    >AU6 

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